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THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 
OF ENGLAND 



THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA SERIES 

Edited by Richard Burton 

THE 

CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 

OF ENGLAND 



BY 



THOMAS H.^ DICKINSON 



Sl ON-REFER f 




gWVAD-a3S 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BEOWN, AND COMPANY 

1917 






Copyright, 1917, 
Bt Little, Brown, and Company. 



All rights reserved 
Published, February, 1917 



ff 



Nottooot) ^r(80 

Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

Prcsswork by S. J. Parkhill & C o.. Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



/ 

MAR -3 1917 



'CiA4.17;i09 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Early Victorian Theatre ... 1 

II The Decline of the Romantic Tradition . 14 

m Adaptation and Experiment .... 30 

IV Toward a New English Theatre ... 49 

V Dramatists of Transition .... 68 

VI Henry Arthur Jones 90 

VII Arthur Wing Pinero 108 

VIII The Busy Nineties 133 

IX New Organization 154 

X George Bernard Shaw 176 

XI Dramatists of the Free Theatre . . 205 

XII The Challenge of the Future . . . 225 

Bibliographical Appendix .... 241 

Index 283 



THE CONTEMPORAEY DRAMA 
OF ENGLAND 

CHAPTER I 

The Early Victorian Theatre 

It has been the fate of the theatre that gave to the 
world the first dramatist of modern times to rest always 
under the imputation of failure. Sidney, Addison, 
and Goldsmith, separate in time, are one in deploring 
the low state of the theatre. When we come into the 
nineteenth century we find Byron, surveying the non- 
sense, the puns, the mummeries of the German schools 
of English drama, exclaiming : 

Who but must mourn, while these are all the rage 
The degradation of our vaunted stage. 

A score of years later, in 1829, Carlyle writes, "Nay, 
do not we English hear daily, for the last twenty 
years, that the Drama is dead, or in a state of suspended 
animation; and are not medical men sitting on the 
case, and propounding their remedial appliances, 
weekly, monthly, quarterly, to no manner of purpose ?" 

1 



2 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

From Carlyle's time to our own the English theatre 
has existed under a universal censure. And yet the 
theatre has been as active as any other institution of 
the nation. The year that brought Victoria to the 
throne brought Macready into control of a company 
that was to stand as the last support of the poetic 
drama. That year saw the production of the first 
plays of Lytton and Robert Browning. During the 
reign of the great queen, Macready, Boucicault, Charles 
Kean, Phelps, the Bancrofts, Robertson, Gilbert, and 
Irving rose and made their contributions to English 
theatrical history. Before she passed away, Sydney 
Grundy, Henry Arthur Jones, and Arthur Wing Pinero 
had adapted to England movements that had attained 
a vogue on the Continent, and in social structure there 
had been a complete revolution in theatrical art. 

The first theatrical problem to be attacked during 
the reign of Queen Victoria was the problem of mo- 
nopoly. The monopoly of the patent houses, Covent 
Garden and Drury Lane, over the right to produce the 
English masterpieces of the stage, goes back to the re- 
opening of the theatres under Charles II. In 1843 
there was passed the remedial act by which from this 
time forward all regular theatres in England were 
placed upon a parity before the government. This 
Act of 1843 was the last word in a chapter of par- 
liamentary activity which had gone back to 1832 when 
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, then a new member of Parlia- 
ment, had moved to raise the disabilities under which 
the unlicensed theatres suffered in comparison with 
the Drury Lane and Covent Garden and Haymarket 



THE EARLY VICTORIAN THEATRE 3 

theatres. This chapter itself was but the concluding 
passage in a history covering one hundred and seventy- 
five years, in which more and more vigorous struggles 
had been made by unlicensed theatres against the mo- 
nopolies of the patentees. 

The situation of the theatre before the correcting 
Act may best be shown by distinguishing between 
its legal and actual status. Before 1843 only three 
theatres in England were legally empowered to play 
the legitimate national drama, Shakespeare, Beaumont 
and Fletcher, Congreve, Otway, and others of the old 
dramatists. These theatres were Drury Lane and 
Covent Garden, which existed by patent granted by 
Charles II at the opening of the theatres in 1662, and 
the Little Theatre in the Haymarket which lived under 
a renewable license, first granted in 1766 to Samuel 
Foote. These theatres were known as the majors. As 
they had a monopoly of legitimate plays, all other 
theatres, known as minors, were limited to concerts, 
farces, and variety entertainments. Serious efforts 
were made by law to distinguish between the legitimate 
play and the play to be produced by minors, and it was 
finally decreed that plays for the minors should be only 
those plays that had musical accompaniment. 

In its main principles the law was clear enough, but 
facts continued to develop to make difficult the admin- 
istration of the law. The patent theatres had been 
established by Charles II in a city of less than two 
hundred thousand inhabitants. By the beginning of 
the nineteenth century London had grown to be a city 
of almost a million. To meet the new demands of the 



4 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

audience, the managers enlarged their theatres to such 
a size that only great productions could be staged in 
them. Meanwhile the minor theatres were growing 
to great popularity. These theatres had developed 
from the amusement taverns of the eighteenth century, 
in the East End and in the outskirts, from Vauxhall 
and jMarylebone Gardens, from Astleys an^ the Surrey 
Gardens. As their patronage grew they were improved ; 
the Olympic and the Adelphi of the early nineteenth 
century were as well appointed as the patent theatres. 
At first these theatres limited themselves to concerts, 
pantomimes, burlettas, and animal shows. The next 
step is the exchange of entertainments between the 
two classes of houses, the patent theatres borrowing the 
burlettas and animal shows of the minors and presenting 
them between the acts of their legitimate plays, and 
the minors in retaliation presenting Shakespeare and 
high comedy. 

Under such conditions the protected theatre sank 
lower, and the popular theatre improved in standing. 
Though working under great handicaps the minor 
theatres managed to supply some good productions, 
to produce some good actors and many pla\n\Tights. 
The patent theatres were impoverished by legal battles 
and large productions. The most serious result of the 
situation was that it was a breeder of chaos. Between 
the spectacular drama of the patent theatres and the 
new domestic strains of the better minors, the true 
legitimate play fell to the ground. The business of 
the theatre was involved in subterfuges and jealousies. 
There was destroyed the respect the citizens should 



THE EAELY VICTOEIAN THEATRE 5 

have for the national institution of the theatre and for 
the traditions of the legitimate stage. From these 
days two movements stand out, the death of the old 
romantic tradition and the rise of a popular theatre. 

A condition had been reached that no Parliamentary 
action alone could correct. In 1843 Parliament passed 
the act for the freeing of the theatres. Instead of a 
chaos of subterfuges there now followed the chaos of 
new-found liberty. Within two years after 1843 the 
companies of the two great theatres were scattered 
through the minor theatres. In suddenly liberating 
the theatres without giving any support to the better 
standards of the nation's drama the English Parliament 
showed the same disregard for dramatic art that had 
been shown in continuing the patents. Here was 
an opportunity permanently to establish the national 
theatre as a guardian of tradition and a school of the art. 
No such thing was done. All the theatres were put 
upon the same plane, to fight the battle of life or death 
with such weapons as they had. Comedy and poetic 
drama were thrown into the arena with vaudevilles and 
burlesques. The only interest the crown retained in 
drama was in a continuance of a hampering control. 
Music halls were compelled still to live under the gen- 
eral classification of disorderly places. The censorship 
of the Lord Chamberlain was reaffirmed and strength- 
ened. Some of the immediate results are indicated by 
a writer in the Quarterly Review for January, 1872. 
" Companies became of necessity broken up ; actors 
who by time and practice might have been tutored 
into excellence, were ruined by being lifted into positions 



6 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

far beyond their powers; every player became a law 
to himself ; the traditions of the art were lost, the dis- 
cipline which distinguished the old theatres was broken 
down." 

In 1844 J. R. Planche wrote for the Haymarket a 
topical piece called The Draina at Home in which the 
following lines occur : 

Portia. I say you're free to act where'er you please, 
no longer pinioned by the patentees. 
it, * * * * * 

Drama. O joj-ful day 1 Then I may flourish still I 

Punch. May — well, that's something. 
Let us hope you will. 

A stage may rise for you now law will let it. 
And Punch sincerely wishes you may get it. 

But a stage did not arise. There followed for 
twenty years a period of stagnation in the theatre. 
From the opening of the Princess's Theatre in 1841 
until 1866 no new theatre was built in London. Co- 
vent Garden theatre was burned in 1856 and when 
rebuilt went over to opera. Macready retired in 1849. 
Only Phelps and Kean were successful in Shakespeare's 
plays, the latter by a strong application of pictorial 
elements. The state of actors and playwrights w^as 
not improved. The collapse of the circuit system, 
which was to be followed in the sixties by the new 
centralized system, was accompanied by much suffering 
on the part of actors and authors. No longer were 
Norwich, Bristol, Bath, Lincoln, York to maintain their 
circuits of stock actors from whom might come the 
future stars of the metropolis. Pending the change to 



THE EARLY VICTORIAN THEATRE 7 

a better business system, the careers of actors and au- 
thors were not happy. "School mistresses and gov- 
ernesses, shop-girls, dress-makers, cooks, housemaids 
— what are your fatigues to those of an actress?" 
writes T. W. Robertson. Authors were no better off. 
No stage writer of this time could afford to live by com- 
position alone. Knowles had been teacher, preacher, 
and maker of dictionaries, as well as dramatic author. 
Douglas Jerrold was engaged as dramatic author at 
five pounds a week and received seventy pounds for 
Black-eyed Susan. Dion Boucicault tells us that, as 
it was cheaper for a manager to buy a translation at 
fifty pounds than a new play at two hundred and fifty, 
the theatre w^as served by impoverished hacks and 
translators. 

The low state of the theatre was reflected in popular 
estimation. In 1832 a Parliamentary committee re- 
ported that it had found a considerable decline in 
the "taste of the public for theatrical performances." 
This low standard was representative of all classes. 
At the time that Macready was making his first venture 
at Covent Garden in classical tragedy Queen Victoria 
was supporting with her repeated attendance the 
zoological shows at Drury Lane. The attitude of 
artists, critics, and men of letters toward the theatre 
was either repugnant or patronizing. Carlyle looked 
upon the stage as a thing of tricks, attempting to do 
by mechanical means what could only be done by poetic 
genius. Other writers surrendered their taste abso- 
lutely upon entering a playhouse. Ruskin could admire 
anything, even the Claudian of W. G. Wills. Dickens' 



8 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

experiments in playwriting are notorious. The story 
is told of Thackeray that, going to the theatre with 
Edward FitzGerald, the latter was so bored that he 
wanted to go home, but Thackeray shouted " By God 1 
Isn't that splendid." The zeal for social reform of the 
mid-century, for Chartism, for University Extension, 
for Christian settlements had not yet found the social 
key to better public amusement. 

For such conditions the plays of the first half of the 
Victorian reign were written. What were the general 
classes of plays to which the audiences gave their sup- 
port? Three conditions govern all kinds of plays. 
First. Romanticism, though past its prime, continues 
to supply the motives as well as the formulas and 
characters of plays both prose and verse. Second. The 
common interests of experience begin to elbow out 
the ideal interests of the imagination. Third. There 
begins again an increasing tuition to the schools of 
playwriting in France. 

Under these three conditions six types of plays 
flourish in the theatre from 1840-1865. 

1 . Verse Plays. A few of these were based upon the 
classic tradition of Greek and French tragedy, but the 
great majority follow the models of Elizabethan tragedy 
and comedy. 

2. Melodrama. These plays began in the minor 
houses with German melodrama of the Kotzebue school. 
In the second quarter of the century there came his- 
torical melodramas from France as an offshoot of the 
romantic movement. These found place on the stages 
of the great theatres. 



THE EARLY VICTORIAN THEATRE 9 

3. Burlesque and Extravaganza. Opera, which had 
developed in the eighteenth century out of Italian 
models, joined with the burletta of the minor theatres 
to create burlesque. As this grew in popularity it 
added spectacular elements and became the fairy play 
and the extravaganza. 

4. Domestic Drama. The place of serious drama is 
now largely taken by the domestic play of the middle 
classes. This play traced its source to the realistic 
tragedy and domestic comedy of the eighteenth century. 
To this class belong rural plays, nautical plays, and 
racing plays. 

5. High Comedy. With the growth of popular inter- 
est in domestic themes and in sensational display high 
comedy declined in vogue. High comedy was to come 
again, debased indeed, in the translations and adapta- 
tions of Scribe's well-made plays. 

6. Farce. Taking the place of high comedy we 
now find the one-act farce played as a curtain raiser 
at the great theatres, or as a variety at the music 
halls. In the seventies the farce was expanded to 
three acts. 

In the vogue of burlesque may be found the one sign 
of health in the early Victorian theatre. Of all the 
orders mentioned burlesque is the form that expresses 
most directly a reaction to the life and art of the day. 
Historically the burlesque motive goes back to the 
beginnings of opera in England. Gay's Beggar's Opera, 
presented at Lincoln's Inn Fields, a minor theatre, in 
1727, was "written in ridicule of the musical Italian 
drama." The burletta (from Italian burlare, meaning 



10 THE CONTElvn»ORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

to mock, to banter, to jest) was the form of entertain- 
ment expressly sanctioned by the Act of 25 George II 
permitting the licensing of musical performances in 
minor theatres. When it was introduced into the 
Marylebone Gardens it became so popular as to threaten 
legitimate drama. 

Superficial as were the burlesques, they were unique 
in that they had in them some elements of social and 
art commentary. The vogue of burlesque represented 
the desire on the part of men to amuse themselves 
while still retaining their judgment. Men were ready 
to laugh at their own extravagances, to turn things 
around and view the fixed order in a topsy-turvy 
mirror. While a large part of the stage was dominated 
by sham sentiment, sensationalism, melodrama, these 
plays ridiculed the pompous and sued for mirth. 
Herein lies the justification of the hundreds of bur- 
lesques that from the youth of Planch e to the time of 
Gilbert crowded the stages. 

The main characteristic of burlesque is that it ridi- 
cules by exaggeration the theme of a work of art or 
of a custom. Thus burlesque refers either to a play 
or a book, a man or a group of men. But usually these 
are struck either through their pretensions or their 
lofty emotion. The great mass of nineteenth-century 
burlesque attaches itself to the stories that had become 
threadbare in romantic fiction and on the stage. The 
stories of Faust and ISIarguerite, Sappho, Antony and 
Cleopatra, Dido, Robin Hood, Orlando Furioso, and the 
plays of Shakespeare were parodied. The primary 
rule of burlesque was the first rule of paradox : find the 



THE EARLY VICTORIAN THEATRE 11 

revered thing and laugh at it ; find the accepted thing 
and deny it. Mythology was violated, and probability 
inverted. Men played women, and women, men. 
Cowards played hero, and great warriors turned cow- 
ards. All this was delivered in bad verse, with multi- 
tudes of puns, and to the accompaniment of songs and 
dances and with irrepressible animal spirits. Many of 
the early burlesques were not signed. The chief later 
writers of burlesques were Francis Talfourd, J. Palgrave 
Simpson, F. C. Burnand, John Brougham, William 
Brough, and H. J. Byron. 

Higher than the burlesque and no less popular was 
the extravaganza. Planch e, who was its creator, de- 
scribes this as a "whimsical treatment of a poetical 
subject as distinguished from the broad caricature of a 
tragedy or serious opera, which was correctly described 
as burlesque." The extravaganza was usually based 
upon a fairy legend treated lyrically and with elaborate 
scenic display and ballet features, ending with a " grand 
transformation scene." An early extravaganza was 
Planch e's Riquet with the Tuft, presented at the Olympic 
in 1836. To this class belong the same writer's 
Sleeping Beauty (1840) and The Golden Fleece (184:5). 
One of the best of the later fairy extravaganzas was 
Albery's Oriana (Globe, 1873), and the height of 
expense was reached in Boucicault's Babil and Bijou 
(1872). 

Each year, as Christmas approached, the theatres 
of London, both great and small, prepared a Christmas 
pantomime. This was presented on Boxing Day and 
ran as long as there were audiences to see it. The 



12 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

subjects of the pantomime were the fairy stories beloved 
of children and grown-ups — Robinson Crusoe, Beauty 
and the Beast, Little Red Riding-Hood, Bluebeard, 
Sinbad the Sailor, Dick Whittington and his Cat, Jack 
the Giant-Killer, Planch e outlined the conventional 
nursery tale, "in which the course of true love never 
did run smooth", and the cross-grained father, the 
pretty daughter with two suitors, one wealthy and ugly, 
the other poor and debonair, at the touch of a fairy's 
wand all turn into the characters of the Harlequinade, 
and in the end are found in a long pursuit through a dark 
forest. Thackeray bears witness to the popularity of 
the pantomime. " Very few men in the course of nature 
can expect to see all the pantomimes in one season " 
he writes in Round About a Christmas Tree, "but I 
hope to the end of my life I shall never forego reading 
about them in that delicious sheet of the Times which 
appears on the morning after Boxing Day." 

The plajnvrights of that day were bohemians as a rule, 
men who knew the chances of a precarious calling, and 
made up for the pinch of poverty with good spirits. 
Charles Reade in Triplet in Peg Woffington (dramatized 
by Reade and Taylor as Masks and Faces) presents the 
characteristics of a life he has known, in a character that 
has some resemblance to the actual Tom Robertson, 
and a life that appears again faithfully presented in 
Pinero's Trelawney of the " Wells." Among the early 
Victorian dramatists are Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857), 
contributor to Punch, who was what James Hannay 
calls a "humorous thinker", author of the long-popular 
Black-eyed Susan; or. All in the Downs (1829) ; Edward 



THE EARLY VICTORIAN THEATRE 13 

Fitzball (1792-1873) writer of nautical drama and 
melodrama; J. Maddison Morton (1811-1891), maker 
of farces and vaudevilles (Lend Me Five Shillings, Grim- 
shaw Bagshaw and Bradslmiu, Box and Cox, A Capital 
Match) ; William Bayle Bernard (1807-1875), maker of 
farces ; J. B. Buckstone (1802-1879), writer of melo- 
dramas; Mark Lemon and John Oxenford, each the 
author of his scores of plays. Two men stand above 
the rest. J. R. Blanche (1796-1880) was a maker of 
spectacles and fairy plays. His chief service to the 
stage lay in his researches into costume and heraldry. 
As early as 1823 he costumed the Kemble production 
of King John at Drury Lane by historical principle. 
His History of British Costume (1834) was standard. 
Dion Boucicault (1820-1890), who some years later 
was to do significant work in the reorganization of 
the theatre, attracted attention in his early twenties 
by writing London Assurance (1841), one of the best 
comedies of manners of the century. 

With these general conditions before us we are ready 
for a more particular statement of the decline of the 
romantic tradition in the theatre. 



CHAPTER II 
The Decline of the Romantic Tradition 

In the decline and disappearance of a romantic 
drama is to be found a suggestive chapter on the 
development of a new function of the theatre. This 
function was not easily reached. It came only through 
much experiment and a plentiful record of failure. 
And it arose in practical opposition to the most strongly 
intrenched tradition on the stage of any modern 
nation, the tradition of the chaotic, plastic, magnified 
idealism of the Shakespearean play, held by main 
force on the stage by managers, dramatists, and actors, 
until the new popular interests swept it away. 

It was not the substance of the Shakespearean 
ideal that remained. It was only the misapplied 
formula. Plays that were written in the romantic spirit 
bear all the evidences of compulsion, of a pressure 
that goes against the artist's grain. Out of this came 
the closet play, in itself a confession of divided issues. 
The closet play arises from the application of the 
standards of one day to the art of a later day. It was 
the result of an effort to continue the tradition of 
Shakespeare or the Greeks in a day which had lost 

14 



THE DECLINE OF THE ROMANTIC TRADITION 15 

both traditions on the stage. The romantic dramatists 
of the nineteenth century fall into two classes. Either 
they are true poets, like Byron and Browning, neither 
of whom succeeded on the stage, or they are journey- 
men who work by models, and bargain with expediency. 

The dramatic poets of the forties were desperately 
clinging to the old standards. They saw the theatre 
turning to uses that they did not comprehend, and they 
laid hold of the only security that lay at hand. Some 
of them honestly and some with selfish purpose, but 
all by one measure or another, turned to Shakespeare 
for support. The story of their failures and their 
relative successes, is full of suggestion as to the new 
problems of the English stage, a stage that was not 
soon again to deal with magnified ideals but was to 
deal with practical facts, and had by experiment 
painfully to seek for a method. 

Behind every dramatic author there stands the 
producer. For the true source of the romantic re- 
vival of the forties we look to William Charles Mac- 
ready. Reared in the provincial circuits, coming 
to London at the age of twenty-three in 1816, play- 
ing his first part in London in The Distressed Mother, 
a tragedy of the French regular type, for the next 
thirty-five years Macready did more than any other 
man of the century to encourage the composition of 
poetic plays. Macready early supported Shell, he 
was the first to give recognition to James Sheridan 
Knowles, and in 1836 he produced Sergeant Talfourd's 
severely classical tragedy Ion. In this year he quar- 
relled with Bujin at Drury Lane and took over his 



16 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

own company. During his management of Covent 
Garden and Drury Lane he opened the stage to Edward 
Bulwer-Lytton's The Duchess de 4a Valliere (1836) ; 
The Lady of Lyons (1837) ; Richelieu (1839) ; Robert 
Browning's Strafford (1837) ; A Blot in the 'Scutcheon 
(1843) ; Henry Taylor's Philip van Artevelde (1847), 
and a dozen other promising works in dramatic poetry. 

At first glance a Hst of plays such as the above 
would seem to promise a new romantic summer. It 
is only when we look behind the plays to the careers 
of the writers that we see how hopeless was the effort 
to keep poetic drama alive. Without exception the 
careers of these men present a spectacle of divided 
loyalties, of ill-starred effort in a lost cause, of surrender 
to the imperious call to write to please the crowd, 
or of relinquishment of all hopes of success on the 
stage. With the exception of Browning's work, the 
best plays of the period were closet plays, R. H. Home's 
Death of Marlowe (1837), and Sir Henry Taylor's 
Philip van Artevelde (1834, produced 1847). 

No man better illustrates the confusion of the 
stage of the time than Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862). 
In succession he was actor, editor, writer for the 
stage, preacher, and teacher of elocution. He was 
continually ill-paid and improvident. He began with 
romantic tragedy; he ended with poetic comedy, 
comedy of manners, melodrama, domestic drama, and 
adaptation. As if to seal his association with the past 
Knowles attached verse to all these classes of plays. 

If in form Knowles belonged to the past, in substance 
and temper he belonged to his own time. There is 



THE DECLINE OP THE ROMANTIC TRADITION 17 

revealed in Knowles for the first time in English 
popular romantic drama a consciousness of class dis- 
tinctions. His first play, Virginius, is most nearly 
Elizabethan in social outlook. The populace is a 
Shakespearean populace. But in William Tell there 
are the passions of social revolution. Knowles treats 
the problems of the changing social order as if he were 
treating a romantic theme. In situations which Hebbel 
in Germany was now beginning to regard as of social 
import Knowles saw only the materials of romance. 
The most charming characteristics of Knowles's work 
are his power of domestic feeling and his delicacy in 
the treatment of women. Even his most austere 
plays are softened by a healthy domestic spirit. "We 
have Roman tunics but a modern English heart", 
writes R. H. Home of Virginius. This explains why, 
though Knowles clung to verse, his plays tended to 
fancy and comedy rather than to heavy declamation. 
And perhaps this interest in the immediate present- 
ment rather than the distant ideal explains his admi- 
rable treatment of women. 

In Knowles's contemporary, Edward Bulwer-Lytton 
(1803-1873), one can read other evidences of the state 
of the theatre. An aristocrat, a parliamentarian, a 
writer of extraordinary intellectual and technical 
facility, Bulwer had no aesthetic conscience. In his 
second effort in dramatic composition he produced 
the most popular romantic play of the century. It 
is not on record that he ever attempted to search out 
the spirit of the age. He was content to deal with 
its false shows. He turned to the theatre to show his 



18 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

virtuosity. He dropped it when success no longer 
smiled. His first play, The Duchess de la Valliere, 
produced by Macready at Covent Garden in 1836, 
was a failure. He wrote The Lady of Lyons (1837) 
to show that he could do the task, and followed this 
in 1839 with Richelieu, or, Tlw Conspiracy. His inter- 
est in the stage ceased with the composition of Money 
(1840). 

The Lady of Lyons has the one indispensable merit 
of the romantic play. It has in it the free plunge of 
life. Against this merit all its faults, its sentimentality, 
its mock revolutionary spirit, its tawdry imagery, 
bad verse, and tricky intrigue count for nothing. The 
play has succeeded because the author has caught the 
one trick of the Elizabethans that most imitators 
miss. Richelieu is a better play than The Lady of 
Lyons in that its motives are more honest and its 
action is more solid. In the writing of this play, which 
is really a character chronicle, Bulwer has the advantage 
of the model of Hugo's Cromwell. Bulwer-Lytton 
rendered no service to the stage save to find the weak 
point in the romantic tradition and stab it through 
this. 

Below both Knowles and Bulwer as a writer, but 
no less significant of the course of romantic drama, 
stands Westland Marston (1819-1890). Marston's 
career as a writer covers the fifty years of the decline 
of poetic drama and the rise of a new organization and 
a new formula. The Patrician's Daughter was pro- 
duced by Macready at Drury Lane while young Brown- 
ing was hopefully writing for the stage. His last 



THE DECLINE OF THE ROMANTIC TRADITION 19 

play appeared while Tennyson, under the encourage- 
ment of Irving, was belatedly turning to tragedy. 
Uninspired, capable, an excellent craftsman, Marston 
devoted himself to the maintaining of the ancient 
dignities of English tragedy. As a result he found 
himself alienated from his time. Not having the 
imagination of Knowles, he had more of the sense of 
social issues. Social problems are treated in The 
Patrician's Daughter, written when he was only twenty- 
two ; in The Heart and the World (1847) ; Anne Blake 
(1852), a domestic drama; A Life's Ransom (1857), 
a drama of combined historical and domestic character : 
and in A Hard Struggle (1858), a play in prose. When 
he took up historical tragedy as in Strathmore (1849) 
and Marie de Meranie (1850) he was not successful. 
Though never a playwright of first rank, Marston 
occupied a position of great dignity during many 
years and as critic and authority on stage history 
exercised an important influence. 

The one great poet who contributed plays of theatric 
and poetic merit to the stage of the nineteenth century 
was Robert Browning. Browning was turned to the 
stage by the encouragement of Macready. At a 
meeting in Talfourd's chambers after the performance 
of Ion in 1836, Macready asked Browning to write 
him a play to relieve him of an American tour. Out 
of this meeting there came Strafford, produced by 
Macready at Covent Garden in 1837. Thereafter for 
some years Browning wrote plays diligently, but after 
composing six plays relinquished hope for success in 
the acted drama. 



20 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Of all the poets of the century, Browning was most 
richly endowed with the faculties of the theatre. He 
was no writer of lyrics who was essaying an unsym- 
pathetic medium. Jerrold's words after Strafford, 
predicting "for Mr. Browning that he is to rise to 
such an eminence as a dramatic poet as has not been 
attained by any in our time ", were abundantly war- 
ranted by his gifts. He had the gift of character, of 
pregnant dialogue, of salient action, of vitalized archi- 
tecture. He was dramatic in that he was concerned 
with the springs and sources of life and their revela- 
tion in the expression of men. He was one with the 
dramatists of all time in that he probed deep to 
the motives of men and contrived the uncovering of the 
sources of their action. 

And yet he failed in some of the qualities most essen- 
tial to the playwright. Browning was never able to 
handle intrigue. The external plottings of action 
seemed to him unimportant and not infrequently un- 
true to the governing impulses of men. For this reason 
Browning bridged with lyric flights spaces he could 
not compass dramatically. He failed also in that he 
was unable to complete the external expression of his 
internal concept. A great play has two lives, — the 
inner, which is the greater; and the outer, which is 
the expression of the inner. Browning's plays are 
rich with the greater life ; either they fail altogether of 
the outer life or this is disjointed, incoherent, articulate 
only in flashes. These things give to Browning's 
plays the appearance of difficulty, and alienate those 
who demand of the theatre — what they would not 



THE DECLINE OF THE ROMANTIC TRADITION 21 

demand of music or painting, — an instant impression 
at the first blow. 

Is drama to be limited to the surface characteristics 
of a life that is no longer lived in surfaces or may 
drama reflect in form and substance the deepest life 
of the time? This is the question we must answer 
before we can decide that Browning was not a drama- 
tist. He had reflected an age of complex strains rather 
than the dominant and simple strains that Shakespeare 
knew. In nothing had he made a greater contribu- 
tion to drama than in his avoidance of moral impu- 
tations on his characters. In Shakespeare men are 
still good or bad, sinners or saved. With Browning 
all men are of the "best." The doctrine of the "best" 
that is Browning's supreme gift to all art, unfits him 
for the styles of the old theatre. Must it unfit him 
for the new? When men are accustomed to differ- 
entiate men by moral attributes this characterization 
by loving insight seems to fail in definiteness. Per- 
haps such elevated persons, such pure spirits never 
joined in plays as in Browning's, and yet he had vil- 
lains and cheats and frauds, pious men who killed with 
too much zeal for right and women who murdered 
with specious argument. The source of tragedy in 
his plays lies not in villainy and hate. It lies in one 
of the varieties of love, in one or another of the illu- 
^ons of the transcendental motive. The weak char- 
acters are treated with a light but never with a forgetful 
hand, as though he would see them honestly but not 
with censure. The half-policies of Constance, the 
fraud of Chiappino, the turncoat Guibert, the weakling 



22 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Charles — not from such as these comes the drama of 
contending forces. There was no place for them on 
the stage of the nineteenth century, a century that 
was very anxiously grubbing in the ground, intent on 
its own purposes, and out of sight of the stars. For 
the poet himself the decision was inevitable. The 
forces that were thinning the art of other dramatists 
drew Browning away from the stage altogether. He 
saw that he could not give the best of his intense 
and scholarly mind to the stage and so he gave up 
dramatic authorship. 

Strafford was produced May 1, 1837, with Mac- 
ready as Strafford and Helen Faucit as Lady Carlisle. 
The play was well received, but on account of the 
failing fortunes of the theatre was soon withdrawn. 
Strafford was Browning's one regular historical trag- 
edy to find performance. His chief concern was not 
so much with the political circumstances of the tot- 
tering throne of Charles I as with the minds that met 
each other around it. The characters are personifica- 
tions of strong, fixed ideas. Only Strafford himself 
fails of a pointed clarity. This man, battling with 
forces of intrigue at court and the inevitable sweep 
of a new order against which he is trying to pro- 
tect his king, emerges into a transcendent figure, self- 
abnegant beyond experience. The play begins with 
frustrate tragedy, the giant enmeshed within and with- 
out. It ends in moon glow. And yet the present 
critic knows no nineteenth-century English tragedy, 
with the exception of The Cenci, that will stand beside 
it. In the expressive envelope of speech by which 



THE DECLINE OF THE ROMANTIC TRADITION 23 

the states of mind of the characters are revealed. Brown- 
ing here reaches new heights for drama. 

Browning came upon the stage amid happy a,uguries. 
For some time he bent his energies toward writing 
plays that would be practical for production. King 
Victor and King Charles (published, 1842), denominated 
by the author " the artistic consequence of what 
Voltaire had termed a 'terrible event without conse- 
quences' in the life of King Victor of Sardinia and his 
son Charles ", was followed by The Return of the Druses. 
Both of these plays were written with the demands 
of the stage in mind. Both are composed for only 
one scene ; and in both, as in Strafford, there is action 
and intrigue. In the former there were only four 
characters, and the play was kept scrupulously to 
externals of speech. For this reason the play suffers 
in poetry and in magic. In spite of the efforts of the 
author to write for the stage, these plays were not 
considered available by Macready. 

Browning was not seen upon the stage again until 
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon was produced under unfavor- 
able auspices by Macready at Drury Lane, February 11, 
1843. The play won applause but not hearty support. 
It was repeated by Phelps at Sadler's Wells in 1848 
and by Lawrence Barrett in America in 1888. A Blot 
in the 'Scutcheon was written by Browning in five days. 
In spite of its lyrical beauty and its pathos — of which 
Dickens writes enthusiastically — the play has many 
faults. Admiration for its excellent qualities should 
not permit one to be blind to the strained character 
of the plot. The situation is impossible because it 



24 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

violates the tact both of the theatre and of life. 
We have not only to accept Mertoun's plea for the 
hand of a woman who is secretly his mistress, but we 
have to believe that after this has been granted he 
would continue the association clandestinely. The 
situation is realized only by means of divinations, coin- 
cidences, and repeated actions. A like charge of hasty 
workmanship must be brought against In a Balcony. 
This play was written in 1853 after Browning had 
relinquished hopes of stage success. There is no flow 
of force from character to character. The scenes 
between Norbert and Constance can hardly be called 
argument, much less dramatic dialogue. They are 
chains of dramatic monologue. The action is vague 
and inconclusive. One may not, indeed does not, ask 
that all action be external and physical. He does ask 
that if the action be placed in the mind, it be definite. 
But if A Blot in the 'Scutcheon and In a Balcony 
fail because of the manner of the handling of the ma- 
terials, this cannot be said of Colombe's BirtMay. 
Here, too, is a play that was not highly successful on 
the stage. It was refused by Kean in 1844 and left 
until 1853 for performance by Phelps. But such a 
failure as that of Colombe's Birthday must be ascribed 
to the failure of the modern theatre to broaden its 
instrumentalities to the highest achievements of dra- 
matic art. Here is a play that treats the body and 
soul of the time with a playful fantasy that dulls the 
edge of social meanings. It is a simple story depend- 
ing upon the knitting together of the minds of men, 
their ambitions, their loves, their strivings for inner 



THE DECLINE OF THE ROMANTIC TRADITION 25 

honesty. The first line starts the action. The last 
line ends it. Between these not a line could be spared. 
The structure fits the plot. There is no sign of incom- 
pleteness or of a tearing of the cloth. Strafford and 
Colomhe's Birthday stand as Browning's warrant as a 
dramatist of the first rank. With Luria, Browning 
gives up thought of stage success. In moving alto- 
gether in zones above the stage, the play loses its 
grip on the concrete. And A SouVs Tragedy and 
Pippa Passes are Browning's last attempts in dramatic 
composition. In these he breaks to pieces the rules 
by which he had tried to limit himself and indulges 
his humor and fancy. A Soul's Tragedy is in two 
acts, the first the poetry of Chiappino's life, the 
second the prose, and the language is fitted to the 
idea. It is a Machiavellian study, "all sneering and 
disillusion." The next play reveals the growing rich- 
ness and freedom of the writer's imagination, which 
he now no longer attempted to limit to the rules of a 
restricted art. Pippa Passes, though "no stage play", 
contains material for at least four plays, and the 
handlmg is in every sense dramatic, though not adapted 
to the requirements of the stage. 

With the retirement of Macready in 1851, there 
ends a strong support of the ancient tradition. There 
now arise sociological melodrama and spectacle plays. 
Macready's successor, Charles Kean, trimmed his 
sails to the wind and kept Shakespeare alive by the 
application of new principles. Charles Kean, the son 
of the tragedian Edmund Kean, in 1851 assumed 
management of the Princess's Theatre in London and 



26 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

inaugurated one of the most remarkable programs of 
Shakespeare production of the century. As a producer 
Kean was faithful to the romantic play, to the treat- 
ment of which he applied two principles : a lavish 
scenic display and a code of archaeological exactness 
in text and costume. Neither one of these principles 
was new. Planche had in 1823 designed the dresses 
and superintended the production of Kemble's King 
John, and his History of British Costume, issued in 
1834, had become a reference book of the stage. 
William Hazlitt, in A View of the English Stage, had 
expressed the precept: "The only rule for altering 
Shakespeare is to retrench certain passages which may 
be considered either superfluous or obsolete, but not 
to add or transpose anything." Kean used these 
principles as a means of connecting the decaying 
substance of the romantic play with the newer and 
more immediate interests of his audiences. His pro- 
ductions of Shakespeare's plays, of which he presented 
a large number with increasing magnificence, were 
triumphant. In connection with each performance 
he issued a Fly-leaf explaining the principles upon 
which the production was based. In the midst of 
his success as a purveyor of the romantic drama, Kean 
scarcely can have been aware that he was doing his 
part to herald the end of the romantic tradition. 

Several years before Kean inaugurated his regime 
at the Princess's Theatre, Phelps opened Sadler's 
Wells Theatre at Islington, :May 27, 1844, hoping 
eventually to " render it what a theatre ought to be — 
a place for justly representing the works of our great 



THE DECLINE OF THE ROMANTIC TRADITION 27 

dramatic poets." In spite of the fact that he refused 
to bow to the new demands Phelps enforced a certain 
measure of success by strength of personahty and 
fidehty to ancient principles. He is now remembered 
for the fact that he produced more of Shakespeare's 
plays than any other nineteenth-century manager 
with the exception of F. R. Benson. He closed his 
theatre in 1862. 

In the third quarter of the century Shakespeare 
staging was in a state of decline. Managers complained 
that the taste of the public no longer permitted the 
old legitimate drama. From across the channel a new 
school of "well made" plays had come into England. 
Native dramatists were trying their pens on new and 
commonplace themes which they were aiming to ele- 
vate by methods unknown to the romanticist. After 
Phelps there came for a few years the pallid art of 
Gustavus Brooke, to be eclipsed by Fechter's lyrical 
and melodramatic rendition of Hamlet, played in a 
fair wig and without strutting. Though Fechter's 
vogue was short-lived, it effectually put an end to the 
school of the "noble Romans." "Shakespeare spells 
ruin and Byron bankruptcy ", said Boucicault in sig- 
nalizing the end of an era. In these circumstances 
Irving, the descendant of Kean, brought a short new 
vogue for poetic drama in encouraging the aged 
Tennyson to try his hand at an unfamiliar art. 

In the same sense that Macready is responsible for 
Browning, Irving is responsible for Tennyson. But 
with Tennyson playwriting was an afterthought, a 
task undertaken late in a life that had already done its 



28 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

enduring work. Tennyson's plays are significant as 
showing his possession in old age of a fecund and 
experimenting mind. In spiritual quality they dis- 
play the characteristics of his verse, — moral solidity, 
sympathy for the poor with no savor of the manor 
house, and a felicity of phrase that never refines itself 
into subtlety. But when one considers them as stage 
plays it is difficult to find anything to say that will do 
credit to the writer. Control was on them from the 
start. They were exercises undertaken by a master in 
a medium with which he was unfamiliar. The little 
plays. The Falcon, The Cup, The Promise of May, 
can be compared with nothing so well as with the 
fantasies of Musset, and nothing so well shows how 
far Tennyson falls short as a dramatist as does such a 
comparison. 

Tennyson's chief bid for remembrance was made 
in his historical tragedies, Queen Mary, Becket, and 
Harold. Only two of these were produced, the first 
at the Lyceum in 1876, and Becket at the same theatre 
in 1893. These are plays from English history, a 
field for which few poets have Tennyson's virile British 
pen. Each of them has something of the hieratical 
element, a strain that in Tennyson approached the- 
atric effectiveness. In management of historical epi- 
sodes, in handling of characters, the plays show fidelity 
to the spirit of history. But they quite fail to endow 
history with life. They have the appearance of me- 
chanical exercises in an imitated art. The one scene 
in all these plays that has dramatic vitality is the open- 
ing scene of Becket in which the king and Becket play 



THE DECLINE OF THE ROMANTIC TRADITION 29 

chess and foreshadow the struggle that is to come. 
The author was unable to distribute his action among 
his many characters. Becket is on the stage too much, 
and his successive scenes lack climax. When Tenny- 
son creates intrigue or imitates the comedy of the 
Elizabethan play, his drama becomes rather lower than 
second rate. Queen Mary and Harold are even less 
successful than Becket. The former play is false in 
following the Shakespearean social divisions of clowns, 
common people, gentleman, and kings. The character 
of Philip is badly handled. Though not successful 
as drama, Harold is remarkable for the consistency 
with which the temper of the play is maintained in the 
color of the Early English romances. 

Irving was the last representative of the older order 
of production, raised to eminence, as we shall see in a 
later chapter, by his contributions to the dignity of 
the theatre. The plays of Tennyson represent a late 
afterglow of the sunset of the romantic drama in 
England. 



CHAPTER III 

Adaptation and Experiment 

In 1865 the chaos that began in the freeing of the 
theatres came to an end. The first sign of new 
order was the building of new theatres. From 1843 
to 1866 the number of theatres had remained fixed at 
twenty-four or twenty-five. By the end of the century 
this number had doubled. More significant is the 
growth in number of music halls, from forty-one in 
1866 to over five hundred. The movement for new 
theatres begins with Marie Wilton's opening of the 
Prince of Wales's Theatre in 1865. Thereafter new 
theatres were opened every year. For the first six 
years the list includes The Holborn (1866), The 
Queen's (1867), The Globe, The Gaiety (1868), The 
Charing Cross (1869), The Vaudeville (1870), The 
Court Theatre, The Opera Comique (1871). Later 
came the new Haymarket (1879), Savoy (1881), 
Prince's, and Criterion (1880). 

The inauguration of theatre building introduced the 
era of commercial speculation. Many of these first 
theatres were failures. But while there was failure, there 
was also success. Actors, authors, and managers began 

30 



ADAPTATION AND EXPERIMENT 31 

to share large incomes. Audiences began to increase 
in size and improve in quality. As the artificial con- 
ditions that had governed the stage began to pass away 
many of the people who had before neglected the theatre 
began to turn to it for entertainment. Theatres 
became more ornate and more comfortable. The day 
of great fortunes and reputations had begun. 

In the play itself there were signs of the settling 
of values. As the romantic tradition subsided, men 
turned to the theatre for a commentary on their own 
times. The changes in the intellectual and social life 
of England were reflected in the new technique of the 
play and the new ideals of its production. To the new 
popular interests, practical, immediate, full of problems, 
the romantic play of idealism made little appeal. 
Boucicault expresses the condition of society and the 
stage when he writes, "Our Milton has been directed 
to dismount Pegasus and bestride the lightning which 
science has bridled, Shakespeare is occupied in editing 
a morning newspaper, Dante is exploring the Isthmus 
of Panama to locate an interoceanic canal, Bacon is 
trying to reach the North Pole, while Michael Angelo 
is inventing a sewing machine." 

It need hardly be said that the new plays were 
trashy enough. In casting away the romantic play, 
men had discarded the only tradition that has a firm 
hold on the English craftsman of the stage. The 
English dramatist needed now to learn new rules for 
the making of a play, — a play that should be truthful 
in observation, immediate in contacts, and serviceable 
in the creation of new ideas. In this pursuit the Eng- 



32 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

lish dramatist joined with the dramatists of modern 
Europe, all of whom were attempting to discover the 
formulas that underlie a confused social state. But 
the English dramatist was behind his fellows in that he 
had little technical skill in the making of new codes of 
art. When the English dramatist cast about for rules 
by which to write his new play, he did as he had always 
done before under like conditions. He proceeded to 
borrow from France. 

So begins an era of French influence to be compared 
with the dominion of French drama in the eighteenth 
century. Though the Act of 1852 protected the foreign 
author for five years, there was until 1875 no limitation 
upon adaptation, and it was not until 1887 that foreign 
works were fully protected. Until this latter date all 
the writers of modern plays, — Reade, Robertson, 
Taylor, Boucicault, Albery, BjTon, — learned their 
trade in the school of adaptation. And the new 
French play created the new English audience. For 
thirty years after 1865 no English writer succeeded 
on the stage solely upon his own work. French drama 
was both a school and an open door to the English 
theatre. And of the play it may be said as Lewes 
said of the novel, that the frequency of translation into 
English was in inverse ratio to merit. The plays that 
could be adapted to English use were the plajs of the 
broadest external appeal. The more delicate strains 
of French artistry continued to evade the hand of the 
adapter. 

The new drama of practical interests did not come 
at once. In England as on the Continent it had a 



ADAPTATION AND EXPERIMENT 33 

certain connection with romantic drama through 
the transition form of melodrama. The melodrama 
of the nineteenth century combines the dynamic prin- 
ciple of the romantic play with the substance of the 
naturalistic play. The so-called Gothic melodrama of 
the early years of the century had been a debased 
reflection in natural terms of the passion of German 
romanticism. Maturin in Bertram and Planch e in 
Charles XII had tried to keep alive the austere 
tradition of verse tragedy, but Holcroft's Tale of 
Mystery, produced at Co vent Garden in 1802, had 
been followed by a line of horror and mystery melo- 
dramas down to Buckstone's Dream at Sea and the 
later adaptations of Mosenthal's Deborah, which ap- 
peared in England as Leah (1863), Ruth (1868), and 
Hagar, the Outcast Jewess (1869). 

The debasing of the ideal currency to cheaper uses is 
seen again in the French melodrama that follows the 
French Romantic Revival. The French Romantic 
movement had been inspired by an English writer, 
Scott, and by an English company of actors. The 
movement did not last long and in its best aspects had 
slight influence on the English stage. But from some 
of its meaner traits and from its baser copies there come 
the beginnings of the modern French influence on the 
English theatre. The most important feature in the 
control of the new interests is found in the lowering 
of the caliber of the tragic hero to the dimensions of 
a figure of entertainment rather than of tragedy. 

In this way the Bravo is explained. Usually he 
was a potentate whose exploits and fate provided 



34 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

a certain amount of heroic circumstance without en- 
tailing the display of true heroism. He did not lack 
a certain historical warrant, as is seen in Hugo's Crom- 
well, Dumas's Henry III, and Charles VII. Often he 
was a pretender, an upstart, or an outcast nobleman, 
as in Hugo's Hernani. After the first romanticists of 
France had been followed by their more sensational 
disciples, the Bravo made himself increasingly felt 
both in France and England. Casimir Delavigne, 
Labrousse, author of Louis XIV, Dumanoir, Dennery, 
Legouve, were all put under tribute. Of these the first 
was most influential, his Louis XI, taken from Scott, 
being played by Kean (1855) and Irving (1878) ; his 
Don Juan d'Autriche being produced (1836, 1864) ; 
and his Marino Faliero, from Byron, being played by 
Macready. One of the most famous of the Bravo 
plays was Don Cesar de Bazan of Dumanoir and 
Dennery, first produced in London in 1844. 

The chief figure in these plays was what was known as 
the Frederick Lemaitre hero, named from the famous 
premier of the Porte-Saint-Martin. Dumas's Monte 
Cristo, played first in London in 1848 in a French 
adaptation and again in an English version in 1868, 
combines the characteristics of the Bravo with the 
modern adventurer of business. The heroic French 
melodrama gained an increased vogue through the 
acting in 1860 and thereafter of Charles Fechter in 
Ruy Bias (1860), Hamlet (1861), Don Cesar de Bazan, 
Monte Cristo, Les Freres Corses, Rouge et Noir. Of 
Bravo melodramas the most popular was Charles 
Selby's famous Robert Macaire, first offered at Covent 



ADAPTATION AND EXPERIMENT 35 

Garden in 1843 from the French VAuherge des Adrets. 
To this class belong Taylor and Reade's The King's 
Rival, produced at the St. James's Theatre, 1854, and 
many heroic plays by Taylor, Boucicault, Wills, Meri- 
vale, and others. 

Another type of play directly derived from France, 
though having some source in English and German 
romance, was the monster play. The modern vogue 
of the monster was begun by Hugo in the horrors of 
his early novel, Han d'Islande (1823). The monster 
appears again in Quasimodo in N^otre Dame de Paris 
(1831) dramatized for England by Fitzball as Esmer- 
alda; or, The Deformed of Notre Dame (1834). The 
monster was often a mountebank or a clown whose 
misshapen exterior covers a tragic soul. A popular 
monster play was Hugo's Le Roi s' amuse. Tom 
Taylor adapted this play, from which also is taken 
the opera Rigoletto, under the title The Fool's Re- 
venge (1869). Another form of the monster story is 
Belphegor, adapted first by Charles Webb in 1856 
from Dennery and Fournier's Paillasse and played 
again in 1865 under the title of The Mountebank. 
The monster was often a woman. Writing from Paris 
in 1856, Thackeray mentions Lucrece Borgia and 
Mary Tudor as two popular female monsters. While 
Frederick Lemaitre was the creator of the Bravo on 
the French stage. Mile. George was the creator of the 
female monster of Tour de Nesle, of Lucrece Borgia, of 
Madame de Brinvilliers. The female monster, under 
one or another of the guises of lust, blood-thirstiness 
or cunning, had a certain vogue in England but not the 



36 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

popularity of the Bravo. The latest appearance of 
this character was in the plays of Sardou as interpreted 
by Sarah Bernhardt. 

The French sensation melodrama of Bravos and 
monsters was influential in England not only in direct 
adaptation but as well in supplying characters and 
conventions to the plays of half a century. Among 
the scores of plays of this type produced in England 
those which had the greatest influence, aside from 
the plays mentioned, are The Corsican Brothers, 
adapted from Dumas's novel, Les Freres Corses, by 
Dion Boucicault for the Princess's Theatre in 1852, 
Le Courrier de Lyon adapted as The Courier of Lyons 
(1854) and The Lyons Mail (played by Irving, 1877) ; 
and the Erckmann-Chatrian melodrama, The Bells, 
played by Irving in 1871. 

We now come to London melodrama. This type is 
distinguished from the French sensation play in that it 
has little if any romantic motive and is usually con- 
cerned with moral problems. For the beginnings of 
this type of play we go back to the bourgeois tragedy 
of Lillo in the eighteenth century. An early nine- 
teenth-century melodrama of this type, the source of 
hundreds of later melodramas, is Jonathan Bradford, 
or The Murder at the Roadside Inn, written by Edward 
Fitzball in 1833. This type of melodrama is supple- 
mented by the increased interest in city life and in 
crimes and criminals in which the influence of Bulwer- 
Lytton, Dickens, and Charles Reade may be detected. 
Here again France exercised an influence. Following 
the publication of Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris 



ADAPTATION AND EXPERIMENT 37 

(1842-1843), there came such plays as Feval's Mysteres 
de Londres and Bourgeois's Notre Dame de Paris. The 
famous play Pauvres de Paris was adapted to the 
English-speaking world under many titles, such as 
Fraud and its Victims (1857), The Streets of London 
(1864), London by Gaslight (1868), and Augustin 
Daly's famous Under the Gaslight (1867). Against a 
Balzacian background of houses and streets an action 
heavily freighted with social consciousness took place. 
To this general type was added in 1862 the tremendous 
influence of Les Miserahles, the first English adaptation 
of which was Revelations of London (1868). Thereafter 
came such panoramic plays as London Life, Youth, 
The World, Lights o' London, and the later melodramas 
of J. R. Sims, Paul Merritt, Henry Pettitt. Crude as 
was the London melodrama, there were features in it 
of native English life and of forthright principle that 
made it a useful stepping-stone to other forms of drama. 
The chief influence of French drama in achieving 
workmanlike standards came through the "well-made" 
play. Like the melodrama, this play discarded the 
ideal characters of romance for men in their more 
natural dimensions. It also dismissed elevated mo- 
tives and passions and became altogether a fabric of 
entertainment knit out of the strands of the common- 
place. The creator of the French " well-made " play was 
Eugene Scribe. In perfecting the formula of this play 
Scribe accomplished much good along with something 
of a more dubious quality. He taught men that com- 
monplace men and events are interesting if they are 
skilfully presented. When all is said against Scribe, 



38 THE CONTEMPORAKY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

it must be recognized that in showing the interest in 
events without calHng upon the support of passion or 
sensation he did a great deal to provide the materials 
for later dramatists. Though his followers soon dis- 
covered his shortcomings, there are few who can dis- 
avow his influence. 

Scribe's chief service to England was as a school-master 
of dramatists. In perfecting the "well-made" play, 
Scribe actually perfected an international type of drama, 
for the rules he evolved were as appropriate to the 
human nature of England as of France. The English 
dramatist showed his first sign of ability to handle 
contemporary topics when he began to learn Scribe's 
lessons. In addition he used the Scribe play as a mine 
of material which he fashioned over according to the 
more rigid code of English morality. The " well-made " 
play, with its "gay Colonels, smart widows, and silly 
husbands," became in England a story of disguised 
flirtations and avoided dangers. Boucicault's Irish 
plays were Scribe plays transplanted to the British 
Islands, and overlarded with sentiment and romance. 

The Scribe play deserved no serious consideration 
either for its tears or for its laughter. Sometimes it 
was graceful. Always it was adroit. But it could never 
be mistaken for either art or life. It was neither poetry, 
satire, nor commentary. It was an entertainment 
machine adjusted to the demands of the new audiences. 
For its purpose it borrowed from the effective tricks 
of all orders of plays without belonging to any of them. 
It was not an art of surfaces as is comedy of manners, 
or playful as is fantasy. When it approached tragedy 



ADAPTATION AND EXPERIMENT 39 

it was most comic. It represented a highly expert 
profession, and we pay the maker the same credit we 
give to any one who knows his trade. The " well-made " 
play did not go as far in England as it has gone in 
France. And when it did appear it was usually nothmg 
more than an adaptation or translation. But there 
are some faults that are never again seen after Scribe 
had taught dramatists how to avoid them. The "well- 
made " play was the first consistent adaptation of the 
natural form to the common substance. 

Though adaptation was the rule of the day, it would 
be false to assume that there was no effort to write 
English plays. As rapidly as they could do so the 
dramatists were taking up new ground and occupying 
it. Out of these conditions there developed a new 
group of playwrights, men who found their support 
in adaptation and as rapidly as possible wrote plays of 
their own. First of these is Dion Boucicault, born at 
Dublin, December 26, 1820. While in management 
Boucicault had helped to make an organization that 
would tap the new theatre-going populace, as a drama- 
tist he helped to tap the spring of common feeling. In 
his Leaves from a Dramatist'' s Diary, Boucicault mentions 
three types of plays as popular in his day, — society 
dramas, domestic dramas, and sensation dramas. He 
had written all these and burlesque and verse plays as 
well. He was the author of two of the best comedies 
of his time, London Assurance (1841) and Old Heads 
and Young Hearts (1844). But the work for which he 
is chiefly remembered is his Irish drama beginning with 
Colleen Bawn (1860) and including Arrah-na-Pogue 



40 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OP ENGLAND 

(1865) and the Shaugraun (1875). In The Octoroon 
(1861) Boucicault used the Creole in much the same 
way that he had used the Irish. Boucicault was a 
journalist. His plays were written for a day. But his 
importance in the history of the nineteenth-century 
theatre cannot be denied. 

Like Boucicault, Tom Taylor was a man-of-all-work 
as a composer for the stage. He was translator, 
adapter, collaborator, writer of historical, domestic, 
and sensation plays. With Mark Lemon, Douglas 
Jerrold, F. C. Burnand, E. L. Blanchard, and W. S. 
Gilbert, he represented that group of wits who, while 
writing for the humorous weeklies, continued as well 
to write for the stage. Under the influence of the 
verse plays he wrote three historical tragedies, 'Twixt 
Axe and Crown, Joan of Are, Anne Boleyn. He assisted 
Charles Reade in three plays. Masks and Faces, A King's 
Rival, Two Loves and a Life. Among his hundred 
plays the following are remembered : The Ticket of 
Leave Man (from Brisebarre and Nus), The Overland 
Route, Plot and Passion, Still Waters Run Deep, The 
Unequal Match. Not a great man, his success was 
made by being a very capable ordinary man. 

With far more intellectual substance than Taylor, 
Charles Reade is more of a dramatist and less of a 
playwright. His first ambition was to be known as a 
maker of plays. In this he was not successful, for in 
at least two directions, in historical romance and in 
the purpose novel, his fame has exceeded that gained 
in the theatre. Prolix and redundant in his own work, 
his best traits as a craftsman appeared when he was 



ADAPTATION AND EXPERIMENT 41 

adapting other men's work. He adapted Scribe's 
The Ladies' Battle (1851), Maquet's Le Chateau Gran- 
tier in The Double Marriage (1867), and Drink (1879) 
from Zola's UAssommoir. Though not a dramatist of 
first rank, Reade had an excellent gift of characteriza- 
tion, his power being particularly shown in the hand- 
ling of eccentric and sympathetic characters. 

Three parodists who gained success in burlesque 
are distinguished by their efforts to better their output. 
E. L. Blanchard (1820-1889), contributor to Punch, 
critic, Bohemian, supplied the Drury Lane Pantomime 
for thirty-seven years, writing in all some hundred 
pantomimes. F. C. Burnand (1836- ) had used 
Punch as a medium of parody on the drama in the 
same way that young Thackeray had used it for the 
novel. He was a writer of extravaganzas and nautical 
melodrama and satires. H. J. Byron (1834-1884) 
was a maker of burlesque for the Strand Theatre. 
He was a punster, a handler of egregious paradoxes, 
a hack, now best remembered because in 1865 he 
joined Marie Wilton in organizing the Prince of Wales's 
Theatre. From his scores of plays nothing remains 
save the sense that he might have done good things. 
All these writers are characterized by the same 
traits. They show skill in the telling of an untrue 
or a shallow story, but offer no food for thought, nor 
commentary on life. The nearest one gets to life is its 
gay words and its vulgarisms. Significantly enough, 
one of the characters that comes down to us from 
before Robertson is that of the poor tragedian Triplet 
in Reade's Masks and Faces, the only representative of 



42 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the old traditions now lost in the din of jugglers and 
mountebanks. 

All these were experimenters, men who, knowing the 
difficult straits of the theatre, handled its art gingerly. 
There was needed some one with a harder texture of 
imagination who could take the necessary next step 
toward a true English theatre. Thomas W. Robert- 
son (1829-1871) is no accident in the English theatre. 
His family had for generations served on the pro- 
vincial circuits. Before his success came, he had been 
an actor, a hack writer, and an adapter. He had 
attended school in France and had more than the 
average dramatist's knowledge of the French theatre. 
He had adapted farces from Dennery and Clairville, 
and Labiche; dramas from Dennery and Clement, 
Scribe, and M. Carre ; comedy from Scribe and Legouve. 
When Marie Wilton gave him his opportunity, he was 
ready to make a real contribution to the English 
theatre. 

It has been remarked that most of the influence 
from France was from the poorer kind of play. Mean- 
while there was in France another kind of play, which 
was truer to the standard of art. That there is some 
influence in England from the sedater dramatists of 
France is seen in the fact that even while the English- 
man is learning his trade from Scribe he is making 
sporadic and usually unsuccessful attempts to adapt 
to the English stage the works of Feuillet and Augier. 
Octave Feuillet was too refined, too elegant and aris- 
tocratic, his work was touched with too strong a vein 
of polite melancholy to adapt well. But his plays 



ADAPTATION AND EXPERIMENT 43 

were known. His Le Village had been presented as 
The Cosy Couple in the fifties, and in 1877 it was pre- 
sented again as The Vicarage, a Fireside Story. His 
Le roman d'un jeune homvie pauvre was adapted by 
John Oxenford as Ivy Hall, 1859, and by Westland 
Marston as A Hero of Romance (1868). Augier was 
but Httle adapted in Enghsh, but it is certain that he 
was known. His L'Aventuriere, which Robertson was 
to adapt as Home, had been played in French in Lon- 
don before 1850. And there was in his school "du 
bon sens", a spirit that must have been grateful to 
the English dramatist. His concern with politics, the 
home, and business was far more to the Englishman's 
taste than Dumas's interest in social outcasts and ille- 
gitimate children. Augier defended social institutions 
in quite a middle-class way. "A woman without 
virtue {pudeur) is no more a woman than the man with- 
out courage is a man ", he says. Now this the English- 
man might take as a philosophy with which to begin 
his difficult task of creating a modern English drama. 
That Robertson knew Augier is indicated by a note to 
the published edition of Society, showing the author's 
indebtedness for an incident to Augier's Les Effronies, 
and by his adaptation of L'Aventuriere. 

Robertson's real contribution is his own point of 
view as applied to the building of a play. Now for the 
first time in the domestic play there is some evidence 
of literary interest. Many playwrights had been in- 
fluenced to their hurt by the broad characterization 
of Dickens. Robertson boldly takes as his model the 
whimsical irony of Thackeray, and the disjointed but 



44 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

intense realism of George Borrow. With the author 
of Vanity Fair he discards formaUties of plot and de- 
pends for interest upon the close texture of his char- 
acter study and his knowledge of life. Though some 
forty comedies, dramas, and farces were written by 
Robertson, his fame rests upon the series of plays 
written after his first Prince of Wales's success and in- 
cluding Society, Ours, Caste, Play, School, Home, 
Dreams, M. P., and War. Of these all but Dreams, 
Home, and War were presented at the Prince of Wales's 
Theatre. 

It was the success of David Garrick, adapted from the 
French for E. A. Sothern, that encouraged Robertson 
to try a play in a new vein. This play was Society, 
which, submitted to the Haymarket, was denounced 
as rubbish. Finally accepted by Marie Wilton with 
the remark that "it is better to be dangerous than to 
be dull", it had its first London production, November 
11, 1865, with Marie Wilton as Maud Hetherington, 
Mr. Bancroft as Sidney Daryl, and John Hare as Lord 
Ptarmigant. The play was an immediate success. 
Society displays characteristics of the older drama that 
Robertson discarded in his later plays. The action is 
based on a multitude of circumstances, many of them 
smacking of the property room, — the mistaken pater- 
nity of a child, the bought notes, the arrest for debt, 
the loved and the unloved suitor, the usurious Jew. 
The acts are broken into scenes; there are puns and 
long asides. The plot is divided into two strands of 
action, the one taking place in the Lincoln's Inn Owl's 
Roost ; the other taking place in the Ptarmigant house- 



ADAPTATION AND EXPEElMENT 45 

hold. But with its traits of the older technique there 
is a touch of new reality. Men and women are brought 
upon the stage who were unaccustomed actors before 
the footlights. There was the world of the new com- 
mercial class, of the newspaper, of Parliament. The 
settings were arranged with that care for truth that 
came to be the mark of all Robertson's plays. Robert- 
son could make scenery speak naturally. Character 
and sentiment are revealed with a fine sense of value. 
Nothing could be more economical of means than the 
simple love exchanges between Sidney and Maud. But 
the author does not stop with a surface effect. He 
makes his play stand for a commentary on certain 
forces of the time, the power of money in society, the 
suasion of the press, the effect of social ambition upon 
the author. There is nothing of the revolutionist 
about Robertson. He does not favor the poor over 
the rich. He judges men as men. He hates snobs, 
whether those of place or those who would achieve 
place. In all these respects Society takes new ground 
in English drama. 

In Robertson's next play, Ours, presented in London 
September 15, 1866, are displayed the characteristics 
of construction from which the title "cup and saucer 
play" was derived. The play almost totally lacks in 
intrigue, but what it lacks in plot it makes up in an 
intensity of observation and in an ability to transfer to 
the stage the fleeting impressions of contemporary life. 
The play is in fact a fabric of contemporary sensations 
of which the strongest are the feelings of patriotism and 
affectionate pride in her soldiers aroused in England 



46 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

at the time of the Crimean War. In stage craftsman- 
ship, devoid of artifices or effects, it is a masterpiece. 

Robertson's next play, Caste, presented for the first 
time at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, April 6, 1867, 
though not immediately the most popular of the series, 
stands artistically the highest in the list. More sub- 
stantial than Ours, it is more veritable than Society. 
The action grows out of the moral plot and reflects 
it. There is no adventitious intrigue. The dialogue 
is easy and natural and sufficiently laconic. As in 
the former play the scenes were carefully arranged by 
the author, and specific instructions were given as to the 
way lines were to be spoken in avoiding the stagey and 
commonplace. 

The substance of the play was English. It was based 
upon one of Robertson's own stories written in 1866 
for Tom Hood's Christmas volume Rates and Taxes, 
entitled The Poor Rate Unfolds a Tale. The source 
of both lies in simple heroism, in love of a man for a 
woman, in the joy of return after absence, in the Joys 
of parenthood. The influence of Thackeray is clear. 
Fairfax Daubray of the tale, who becomes George 
D'Alroy in the play, is in his adoration for Alma like 
George in Vanity Fair in his love for Amelia. Through- 
out the play is shown the bungling spirit of careless 
heroism. Frederick Younge, who played D'Alroy, 
first played in the Thackeraj'an manner as a heavy, 
stupid fellow. Clement Scott tells us that Robertson's 
favorite bit in Vanity Fair was the picture of Amelia 
praying during the Battle of Waterloo for George, who 
that moment was lying dead with a bullet through his 



ADAPTATION AND EXPERIMENT 47 

heart, and he goes on : " We seem in Caste to be reading 
of Becky, and Jos, and AmeHa, and George, and Dob- 
bin, not of Polly and D'Alroy, and Hawtree, and 
Esther." 

Robertson was now a successful dramatist supplying 
plays to two or three London theatres at a time. His 
drama, Play, presented at the Prince of Wales's Theatre 
February 15, 1868, was the outgrowth of his travels 
and his interest in Germany. As his art proceeded, 
the author became interested in the more delicate 
gradations of character as represented by the variations 
of national type and the elusive personalities of young 
people and children. In Ours, one of his best char- 
acters was that of the Russian, Prince Perovsky. In 
Play we have some charming pictures of Baden, and a 
love scene famous among the scenes of this master of 
delicate romance. School, produced January 16, 1869, 
was the most successful of Robertson's plays ; at the 
first production running to three hundred and eighty- 
one nights. The outline of the plot was derived from 
the Aschenbrodel of Roderick Benedix. This play was 
something of a tour de force, in that the entire psy- 
chology of the play is schoolgirl psychology. Perhaps 
never before, certainly not in the nineteenth century, 
has a play for adults been constructed out of the play- 
ful, elusive, but immature materials of girlish character. 
That the author succeeded is another mark of his con- 
summate skill as a craftsman, but the play contains no 
traits that would endow it with long life. In these 
later plays the characteristics of the author are develop- 
ing to their extreme. All of his last plays are spun out 



48 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

of some mood or a delicate piece of fancy. Through 
them all goes his tenderness in romance, his admiration 
of the simple heroic virtues, and his satire on the foibles 
of the new commercial classes. His later plays, M. P., 
Home, Dreams, were presented before enthusiastic 
audiences. With War his vogue was broken. After 
his death his plays continued to be produced at the 
Prince of Wales's Theatre, and when the Bancrofts 
moved to the Haymarket they took them along, play- 
ing them in all over three thousand times. There 
were some signs that these plays would be elevated 
into a distinct school of playwriting. But when the 
author died this expectation ceased. In his particular 
line Robertson could have no successor, but there is 
no English dramatist from Gilbert to Barrie who is not 
the better for his pioneering. 



CHAPTER IV 

Toward a New English Theatre 

While playwrights were creating a new style of 
play others were remaking the theatre itself. First 
among these were Marie Wilton-Bancroft and her 
husband, Squire Bancroft Bancroft. Marie Wilton 
(born 1840) in youth played boy's parts in burlesque. 
In 1858 she made her appearance in the Strand Theatre 
under direction of Miss Swanborough in burlesques 
written by H. J. Byron. Of Marie Wilton in her 
Strand days Dickens wrote to Forster: "I call her 
the cleverest girl I have ever seen on the stage in my 
time, and the most singularly original." 

But Marie Wilton was more than a vivacious and 
graceful actress. She was a courageous and far-seeing 
manager, whose vision was equaled by her judgment. 
In 1864 she joined H. J. Byron in the management of 
the little theatre in Tottenham Court Road, which 
under permission from the Court they called the Prince 
of Wales's Theatre. This venture has more than 
ordinary significance in the development of the modern 
theatre. In the first place it was a step away from 
the narrow interests of the fashionable West End. 

49 



50 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

In size the theatre adapted itself to the new standards 
of play. With the passing of the play of magnified 
emotions there passed as well the vogue of the great 
playhouse. The Prince of Wales's Theatre was made 
homelike and comfortable. Upon the stage of this 
theatre the first steps were made toward a new code 
of acting and management. 

The accomplishments of the Bancrofts are to be 
credited to their own genius as conductors, to their 
encouragement of the influence of Robertson, and to 
their careful study of the systems of management of 
the great French theatres. From the first they set 
themselves to the creation of an efficient stock company 
that should adapt itself flexibly to the new comedy. 
Mrs. Bancroft often played in her own company second 
to such players as Mme. Modjeska, Ellen Terry, Mrs. 
John Wood, and Mrs. Kendal. The Bancrofts did 
not discourage long runs, but they made it a practice 
always to withdraw a play at the height of its popu- 
larity in order that its vitality might be retained for 
revival. The new management started the custom of 
paying actors well and protecting them in their dig- 
nity as artists. In production a code of complete and 
tasteful realism was inaugurated. The furniture was 
carefully selected. The women were carefully gowned, 
the men arrayed by the West End tailor. Make-up 
was taken out of the region of caricature and made an 
art. Of the high standards of this company in pro- 
duction The AthencBum speaks. May 18, 1872: "No 
attempt is made by any one of its members to eclipse 
his fellows, or to monopolize either the space on the 



TOWAKD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 51 

boards, or the attention of the audience. No piece is 
presented in such a state of unpreparedness that the 
first dozen performances are no better than rehearsals ; 
no slovenliness in the less important accessories of the 
play is permitted." 

Something of this rigorous standard of production 
is due to the influence of Robertson. Bancroft tells in 
his Recollections about the pains this author took to have 
his "somewhat novel type of characters understood 
and acted as he wished." And both W. S. Gilbert 
and John Hare have given testimony to the value of 
Robertson's methods. Gilbert writes : " I frequently 
attended his rehearsals and learnt a great deal from 
his method of stage-management, which in those days 
was quite a novelty, although most pieces are now 
stage-managed on the principles he introduced. I 
look upon stage-management, as now understood, as 
having been absolutely 'invented' by him." And 
John Hare says : " My opinion of Robertson as a 
stage manager is of the very highest. He had a gift 
peculiar to himself, and which I have never seen in 
any other author, of conveying by some rapid and 
almost electrical suggestion to the actor an insight 
into the character assigned to him. As nature was 
the basis of his own work, so he sought to make actors 
understand it should be theirs. He thus founded a 
school of natural acting which completely revolution- 
ized the then existing methods, and by so doing did 
incalculable good to the stage." 

An important feature of the Bancroft management 
was the encouragement given to English dramatists. 



52 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OP ENGLAND 

In addition to Robertson they introduced Wilkie Collins 
to the stage in Man and Wife (1873), and played Gil- 
bert's Sweethearts (1874), and the first ambitious play 
of the young Pinero, Lords and Commons (1883). Of 
the new play they demanded a standard approximate 
to their own. When good new plays were not avail- 
able they returned to the old English comedies : School 
for Scandal, The Rivals, Money, London Assurance, 
Masks and Faces. 

Quite as important as the internal accomplishments 
of this company is the influence it had as a school of 
drama. Audiences, critics, writers, and actors bene- 
fited by its stimulating example. There was hardly 
a leading actor of the new school of drama of the end 
of the century who had not been associated with this 
company. Among the men and women who at differ- 
ent times were members of the Bancroft company 
were Charles Wyndham, Arthur Cecil, Lydia Foote, 
David James, C. F. Coghlan, H. B. Conway, John 
Clayton, John Hare, W. Terriss, Kyrle Bellew, Ellen 
Terry, Mrs. John Wood, Forbes-Robertson, Mr. and 
Mrs. Kendal. 

When in 1885 the two managers, still young, closed 
their tenancy of the Haymarket, which they had 
taken in 1879, it was to the chorus of the first unquali- 
fied approval that had greeted the new English theatre. 
Clement Scott said for them that the seeds of all that 
is systematic and wholesome on the "modern stage 
were sown at the Prince of Wales's Theatre by this 
actor and actress, who, though they retire in the prime 
of life, were chiefly instrumental in restoring order 



TOWARD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 53 

and symmetry out of chaos and confusion." And A. 
W. Pinero is of the same mind in writing to Squire 
Bancroft. "It is my opinion, expressed here as it is 
elsewhere, that the present advanced condition of 
the EngHsh stage — throwing as it does a clear, nat- 
ural light upon the manner and life of the people, 
where a few years ago there was nothing but moulding 
and tinsel — is due to the crusade begun by Mrs. 
Bancroft and yourself in your little Prince of Wales's 
Theatre. When the history of the stage and its 
progress is adequately and faithfully written, Mrs. 
Bancroft's name and your own must be recorded with 
honor and gratitude." 

V In the early seventies there were some signs of 
improvement in the theatre. English authors were 
encouraged to hope for production. Actors were on 
a better standing. The styles of the theatres were 
improved. Great houses arose, each one associated 
with a particular manager. In the eighties the Ly- 
ceum was associated with Irving; the Haymarket 
under the Bancrofts became the home of comedy; 
the St. James became the home of the second English 
company of actors under the direction of Mr. and 
Mrs. Kendal; John Hare went to the Court; and 
Charles Wyndham took the Criterion. Now the 
actor-manager had his opportunity. Melodrama and 
spectacular drama were in the hands of their business 
managers, Harris and HoUingsworth, but the Ban- 
crofts, the Kendals, Henry Irving, H. B. Tree, E. S. 
Willard, Charles Wyndham, John Hare built up new 
traditions of the artist in the place of power. The 



54 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

years from 1865 to 1890 were years of adjustment of 
the theatre to new demands, years of encouragement 
to native authors, and the building of new theatres. 
There were faults enough and dangers and discourage- 
ments. But the hopeful feature was that drama was 
building on the ground. H. A, Jones has written 
that the one real contribution of this period was the 
attempt to treat the realities of modern life. "All 
was crude, confused, tentative, aspiring. But there 
was life in it." 

We have seen that Thomas W. Robertson had a 
leading place in the formation of the company of the 
first modern English theatre. It was a member of 
the Robertson family who established the second com- 
pany of the dramatic revival. Madge Robertson was 
the youngest child in the family of which T. W. Robert- 
son was the eldest. Though twenty years separate 
them she takes her place with him as a clear-headed 
and practical reformer of the stage. She created the 
leading part in Tom Taylor's and A. W. Dubourg's 
New Men and Old Acres (1859), and, after marrying 
W. H. Kendal at the age of twenty, made with her 
husband her first production in Gilbert's The Palace 
of Truth (1870). Thereafter the Kendals associated 
themselves with Gilbert in the same way that the Ban- 
crofts had attached themselves to Robertson, produc- 
ing Pygmalion and Galatea (1871), The Wicked World 
(1873), Charity (1874). They then traveled at the 
head of the Haymarket repertory in As You Like It, 
The Rivals, School for Scandal; joined Mr. Hare in 
a period of management of the Court Theatre, during 



TOWARD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 55 

which they gave Gilbert's Broken Hearts (1875) ; ap- 
peared for a time in the company of Mr. and Mrs. 
Bancroft ; and in 1879 began their most brilliant period 
when they joined Hare again in the management of the 
St. James's Theatre. This theatre the new managers 
made an immediate success. More than half of the 
Kendals' thirty productions between 1875-1885 were 
from the French. But they produced several new 
English plays. Aside from several plays by Gilbert 
they offered Tennyson's The Falcon (1879), and Pinero's 
Money Spinner (1881), The Squire (1881), The Iron 
Master (1884), The Hohhy Horse, and Mayfair, from 
Sardou (1885). After separating from Hare, ]Mr. and 
Mrs. Kendal made their first separate production in 
Pinero's The Profligate (1887). The Kendal manage- 
ment became famous for exquisite judgment and dis- 
crimination in settings of interiors. Herself the most 
finished actress of her day, Mrs. Kendal's mountings 
were said to be perfect. A Kendal piece came to 
be synon^Tiious with "grace, tenderness, intelligence, 
well arranged accessories, a loyally responsive com- 
pany." 

Maintaining the traditions of the best acting and 
management, and creating new standards of comedy 
and refined naturalism, the managements of John Hare 
and Charles Wyndham were always distinguished. 
Charles Wyndham's unflagging spirit and clean com- 
edy method created a new school of comedy at the 
Criterion and gave early recognition to the powers of 
H. A. Jones. Though an excellent manager, John 
Hare is remembered chiefly as an actor. From the 



56 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

time that he played Old Ptarmigant in Society, he was 
recognized as having supplied a new idea to the English 
stage. It was that of the stage artist in miniature. 
Hare's record as a manager is marred by the fact that 
in taking over the Court Theatre in 1888 he inaugurated 
it as a one-man star theatre rather than a theatre of 
associated players after the fashion of the Prince of 
Wales's Theatre. 

Henry Irving did not render service to the new 
English theatre in the same way as did the Bancrofts 
and the Kendals. His significance attaches to his 
application of the standards of the past to the condi- 
tions of the new time. By grace of a strong personality, 
perhaps because he represented the last link with a 
venerated tradition, Henry Irving was able to render 
unique service to the modern stage. 

Irving was the last great representative of the pro- 
vincial system of tuition. Unlike the members of the 
Bancroft company, many of whom came to the metrop- 
olis with slight experience, he had thoroughly schooled 
himself in all the established types of parts. Twice 
he turned away from offers to come to London, in 
order to return to his provincial circuits for further 
years of training. When finally he made his appear- 
ance in London in 1866, he was equipped as few actors 
have been since the eighteenth century. All of this 
equipment was in the line of the romantic or sensa- 
tional and eccentric tradition. His first recognition 
came when he played Digby Grant in Albery's Two 
Roses in 1870. His reputation was increased by the 
manner in which he recited The Dream of Eugene Aram, 



TOWARD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 57 

and he became a figure of first magnitude by his per- 
formance of Mathias in The Bells (1871). With this 
play Irving began his career in the Lyceum under 
the Batemans. Thereafter he played Charles I (1872) 
by W. G. Wills, Eugene Aram (1873), Richelieu (1874), 
Philip (1874), Hamlet (1874), Macbeth (1875), Othello, 
Tennyson's Queen Mary (1876), Richard III (1877), 
The Lyons Mail (1877), Louis XI by Delavigne, and 
in 1878 he became sole manager of the Lyceum. In 
the same year, joined by Ellen Terry, he began the 
most triumphant career in the history of the modern 
English stage, playing Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, 
The Corsican Brothers, Tennyson's The Cup, Romeo and 
Juliet, Much Ado about Nothing, and other plays of 
Shakespeare. He was knighted in 1895 and died in 
1905 at the height of his fame. 

In the above list of plays may be seen many that 
seem out of place among the quieter plays of the natu- 
ralistic movement. Indeed, Irving's repertory looks 
more like that of a Kean of the middle of the cen- 
tury than that of a leader of the stage of the end of 
the century. It must be granted that Irving rendered 
no direct assistance to the new playwright. Nor 
was he sympathetic with his time as actor and pro- 
ducer. He chose only melodramas and sensation 
dramas, many of these old and many from foreign 
sources. He supported no English writer who was 
experimenting on new genres. His main dependence 
was W. G. Wills. He gave a reverent and painstaking 
production to Tennyson's The Cup, Queen Mary, and 
Becket. But he was not a man to experiment. As an 



58 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

actor he was personal and eccentric. He made no 
effort to study the surfaces of nature. His Digby 
Grant compared with the way Hare would have played 
such a part is a cartoon beside an etching. Shake- 
speare he played after the school of Kean; Hamlet 
in an ironic and studious melancholy. In settings also 
he went back to Kean, lavishing upon his Shakespeare 
the most astounding expense, halting the action of 
the part with lovely pictures. 

And yet Henry Irving's career was a tremendous 
service to the theatre. Perhaps because he clung 
to the old tradition and dignified its declining days 
with expensive trappings, because he respected his 
art too much to experiment with it, he did more for 
the English stage than any man of the century. He 
found it a despised art. He left it one of the most 
respected of the arts. When he went on the stage, 
men of the theatre were bohemians and hangers-on 
of Grub Street. He was the first of many to be 
knighted. He spoke before universities and learned 
societies. He contributed to the reviews and issued 
his essays and lectures in book form. Other men 
were the workers in the new English theatre. Irving 
was its statesman. Like Garrick he had the safe 
gift of conservatism, one of the most necessary on a 
stage in which the gambler's chance is supposed to 
be the law of success. "The theatre must succeed 
as a business if it is to succeed as an art," he often said. 
In himself making a success he raised the whole stand- 
ard of the profession. He helped the British play- 
wright by helping the British stage. He was one of 



TOWARD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 59 

the first to insist upon and achieve the adjustment of 
the actor's art to his citizenship. 

We have now to consider a series of influences from 
outside the theatre and in some cases from outside the 
borders of the nation which had a part in the creation 
of a new Enghsh theatre. In 1852 the Court had 
taken cognizance of the demand for a better stage 
by appointing Kean to take charge of the Windsor 
theatricals. A few of the more thoughtful writers of 
the time were beginning to make suggestions toward a 
reorganization of the theatre. Charles Kent, in his 
Charles Dickens as a Reader, quotes Dickens as saying 
that one of his cherished day-dreams was "to settle 
down for the remainder of my life within easy distance 
of a great theatre, in the direction of which I should 
hold supreme authority. It should be a house, of 
course, having a skilled and noble company, and one 
in every way magnificently appointed." This dream 
of Dickens', a reflection of a similar dream long held 
by Goethe, showed that some men saw a vision of a 
new theatre more adequately representing the nation. 
In the minds of other men, critics and scholars, not- 
ably George Henry Lewes and Henry Morley, there 
was the same dream. George Henry Lewes was a 
grandson of an actor and was himself ambitious to 
act. As dramatic critic of The Leader from 1850-1854 
he had written in a style not unlike that of George 
Bernard Shaw. Brilliant, vivacious, resolute of stand- 
ards, he was an especially harsh critic of the French 
carpentry school of playwriting. His essays on the 
art of the theatre were gathered together in 1878 under 



60 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the title On Actors and the Art of Acting. Another 
man of intellectual gifts who wrote on the theatre was 
Professor Henry Morley, who in 1866 completed the 
Journal of a London Playgoer, an invaluable record 
of laboratory notes on the state of the theatre in the 
fifties and sixties, not published until 1891. His 
prologue is a healthy, keen diagnosis of the state of the 
Victorian theatre. He calls upon the educated public 
to take the patronage of drama from Doodle, Dapper- 
wit, and Froth. 

Perhaps the first suggestion that the English theatre 
was not occupj'ing its proper place in the nation fol- 
lowed the visits of foreign troupes to London. During 
the mid-century there was a change of attitude on 
the part of British audiences and critics toward visiting 
companies. Though performances of French and Ger- 
man plays by visiting companies had been common, 
the companies had not always been well treated. In 
1848 the company of the Theatre Historique was hissed 
off the stage of Drury Lane when playing Monte 
Cristo. In 1852-1853 Emil Devrient suffered a dubi- 
ous reception when playing Hamlet in German. But 
as England began to grope toward a solution of her 
own dramatic problems, there came a change in atti- 
tude toward the visiting companies. Fechter was 
warmly welcomed in 1860. And when, in 1871, the 
company of the Comedie Fran9aise visited England 
it was received with enthusiasm. During the Com- 
mune a company of fifteen societaires was hastily 
organized under the directorship of M. Got to play 
at the Opera Comique in the Strand. The company 



TOWARD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 61 

played with few stage properties. Tickets were sold 
by subscription as in France. The repertory idea was 
strictly adhered to, no play being played more than 
twice in succession. On account of the small company 
small parts were taken by great actors. These per- 
formances were largely attended, particularly by artists 
and people of the theatre. English actors and critics 
were attracted by the finish and detail, the exquisite 
attention given to nice points of the production. 

In the following season (1873) Ristori was seen at 
the Opera Comique, and beginning with 1874 French 
companies came every year to the Gaiety. The second 
visit of the Comedie Fran^aise was more noteworthy 
than the first. It occurred in 1879 at the Gaiety 
Theatre under the direction of Mr. Hollingshead, 
who had managed the earlier visit. This time there 
was the full company, and the tour was triumphant. 
Criticism had prepared the way by showing the sig- 
nificance of a state theatre, and by supplying criteria 
by which the excellent technique of the company could 
be judged. The company was now under the direction 
of M. Ferrin. In the company were M. Got, former 
director, Favart, Delaunay, Aimee Desclee and Sarah 
Bernhardt. The career of Sarah Bernhardt as well 
as a new era in the English theatre may be said to 
date from this visit. The plays produced then in- 
cluded some examples of the new social drama of 
Augier and Dumas. The third visit of the Comedie 
Fran9aise occurred in 1893 under the directorship of 
M. Jules Claretie. Outside of this company the 
Continental troupe which had the most influence in 



62 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OP ENGLAND 

England was the German troupe of the Duke of Mei- 
ningen, which made its first visit to England in the 
summer of 1881. 

The result of the visit of the company of the Comedie 
Franpaise in 1879 was to awaken thinkers to the 
responsibility of the nation towards its theatre. The 
man who most effectively sounded the call was Mat- 
thew Arnold in an article on The French Play in London 
published in The Nineteenth Century. This essay, 
later published in Irish Essays, treats the problem 
of the theatre, not as one for authors, actors, or man- 
agers alone, but as a matter involving society as a 
whole. Fired by the art of the great players from 
across the channel, Arnold quotes Goethe : " God 
help us, and enlighten us for the future ; that we 
may not stand in our own way so much, and may have 
clear notions of the consequences of things." 

He inquires into the place the theatre has taken in 
French society and concludes that England must learn 
to use her theatre. He finds that interest in the theatre 
as a social institution is returning. 

" We are at the end of a period," he writes, " and have 
to deal with the facts and symptoms of a new period 
on which we are entering ; and prominent among these 
fresh facts and symptoms is the irresistibility of the 
theatre. . . ." And he goes on, " Wliat is certain is that 
a signal change is coming over us, and that it has already 
made great progress. It is said that there are now 
forty theatres in London, Even in Edinburgh, where 
in old times a single theatre maintained itself under 
protest, there are now, I believe, over half a dozen. 
The change is not due only to an increased liking in 



TOWARD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 63 

the upper class and in the working class for the theatre. 
Their liking for it has certainly increased, but this is 
not enough to account for the change. The attrac- 
tion of the theatre begins to be felt again, after a long 
interval of insensibility, by the middle class also. . . . 
The human spirit has a vital need, as we say, for 
conduct and religion; but it has the need also for 
expansion, for intellect and knowledge, for beauty, 
for social life and manners. The revelation of these 
additional needs brings the middle class to the 
theatre. 

" The revelation was indispensable, the needs are real, 
the theatre is one of the mightiest means of satisfying 
them, and the theatre, therefore, is irresistible. That 
conclusion at any rate we may take for certain. But 
I see our community turning to the theatre with eager- 
ness, and finding the English theatre without organiza- 
tion, or purpose, or dignity, and no modern English 
drama at all except a fantastical one. . , . And in 
this condition of affairs I see the middle class beginning 
to arrive at the theatre again after its abstention of 
two centuries and more; arriving eager and curious, 
but a little bewildered. 

" What are we to learn from the marvelous success 
and attractiveness of the performances at the Gaiety 
Theatre ; what is the consequence which it is right 
and national for us to draw ? Surely it is this : ' The 
theatre is irresistible ; organize the theatre.' " 

Six years before Arnold's essay on the theatre there 
had been quietly introduced into England the influ- 
ence of a man who for thirty years thereafter was to 
be a storm center in English theatrical affairs. Ibsen's 
influence struck England at a crucial moment. Through 
years of adaptation and experiment the English theatre 



64 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

had been working toward new forms. Ibsen's influence 
came at a time to direct this movement into narrow 
channels. On such a man as Ibsen it was necessary to 
take strong position. One was either for him or against 
him. The result was that tendencies which were native 
to the English soil were in some measure combined with 
his alien influence. Directly his influence has not been 
great. But indirectly and during a formative period 
of English drama his outlook and interests took a pre- 
ponderant place in all speculations about the stage, 
and had a strong influence on the temper of English 
dramatists. 

Edmund Gosse first introduced Ibsen to England 
through an article in The Fortnightly Review for 1873 
in which he treated Ibsen as already a mature man 
with his major work accomplished, and introduced to 
English readers The Comedy of Love, Emperor and 
Galilean, Brand, and Peer Gynt. About the same 
time William Archer became acquainted with Ibsen 
and made himself Ibsen's English sponsor, a posi- 
tion he has held ever since. The earliest transla- 
tion of an Ibsen play was Miss Ray's translation of 
Emperor and Galilean in 1876. In 1879 the British 
Scandinavian Society printed extracts from Ibsen's 
work. A condensed translation by William Archer 
of Pillars of Society was produced in a morning per- 
formance at the Gaiety Theatre, December, 1880. 
In 1882 Miss H. F. Lord translated A Doll's House as 
Nora. The same play was adapted by Henry Arthur 
Jones and Henry Herman as Breaking a Butterfly 
(1884). In 1886 Havelock Ellis published Pillars of 



TOWARD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 65 

Society, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People in the 
Camelot Classics. By this time parties began to form 
for and against Ibsen. Edmund Gosse, WilHam Archer, 
R. Farquharson Sharp, A. B. Walkley, and later George 
Bernard Shaw were for him. The older order of 
critics, headed by Clement Scott and Robert Bu- 
chanan, were against him. In 1891 occurred the 
famous Independent Theatre production of Ghosts, 
which precipitated the modern war of the critics. 
In 1893 Beerbohm Tree produced An Enemy of the 
People at the Haymarket Theatre. 

English dramatists fought hard against the influence 
of Ibsen. Up to this time realism had been a theme for 
critical dispute, but few traces of the influence of Zola 
or the younger Dumas had found their way to England. 
But Ibsen's was a force that could not be denied. 
Though the dramatists disavowed his influence they 
studied his themes and imitated his methods. Now 
comes the period of the instrumental drama. The 
influence of Ibsen made English drama more solid. 
Ibsen had the virtue that the English dramatist often 
lacked, the virtue of a consistent moral substance 
that goes down to the heart of humanity and repudiates 
all tricks. While the English dramatist could not 
take from the Frenchman his metallic structure, he 
could take the softened symbols of an intellectual 
realism from the Norwegian. Ibsen's art is full of 
the moral reflections of the inner life. This the Eng- 
lish dramatist took and magnified to a cruder purpose- 
fulness. He took as well Ibsen's predilection for the 
study of sex psychology. There follows a generation 



66 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

in which the sex play obsesses the stage, constructed 
by super-serious men out of ill-digested materials for 
an audience quite lacking in Gallic salt. 

All these activities within and without the theatre 
gave to the eighties something of an air of a dramatic 
revival. Percy Fitzgerald, Moy Thomas, Button 
Cook, Clement Scott raised criticism to new levels. 
Books begin to appear on the contemporary theatre. 
In 1882 appeared William Archer's English Drama- 
tists of To-day. Four years later Archer published 
About the Theatre. Magazines increased the space 
given to theatrical interests. The AthencBum had a 
department of drama from its start in 1882. The 
Saturday Review called G. B. S. to write dramatic 
criticism, and a few years later Shaw was succeeded 
by Max Beerbohm. The Fortnightly Review, under 
the editorship of Frank Harris, began a series of articles 
on drama that have made this Review a chronicle of 
the history of the modern dramatic movement. In 
1880 there were established The Theatre and The Jour- 
nal of Dramatic Reform. The interest that was shown 
in print was reflected in new organizations for the sup- 
port of a better drama. In 1882 a meeting was held 
at the Lyceum Theatre for the discussion of a pro- 
posed "School of Dramatic Art" for England. In 
the same year, under the direction of Herbert Beerbohm 
Tree, the Costume Society was established to encour- 
age archaeological correctness in costuming. In 1884 
the Oxford Dramatic Society was organized. Learned 
societies began to open their doors to those who spoke 
for the stage. In 1884 Mrs. Kendal read a paper 



TOWARD A NEW ENGLISH THEATRE 67 

before the Social Science Congress on The Drama. 
In 1888 Archer lectured on The Modem Drama before 
the Royal Institution. Henry Irving was in frequent 
demand before universities and academies. The time 
seemed to be ripe for a new drama. 



CHAPTER V 

Dramatists of Transition 

The delicate machine of the Robertsonian play did 
not long survive the death of the dramatist who origi- 
nated it. The importance of Robertson lies in the 
fact that he gave the theatre a bias toward artistry 
and truth, and not that he offered a formula acceptable 
for English drama. Of the twenty-one dramatists 
treated m ATcher's English Dra7natists of To-day (1882), 
Westland Marston, Lord Lytton, T. W. Robertson, 
Charles Reade, and Dion Boucicault belonged to a 
past age. James Albery, F. C. Burnand, H. J. Byron 
were doing nothing that had not been tried before. 
Herman C. Merivale, W. G. Wills, Paul Merritt, and 
George R. Sims were writers of sensational plays and 
melodrama. Only W. S. Gilbert, Sydney Grundy, 
H. A. Jones, and A. W. Pinero were doing work of a 
kind that promised to grow to greater value. 

Dramatists were still timid. The way to fame still 
led through the dramatized novel and melodrama. 
Old plays were rewritten ; the novels of Fielding, 
Goldsmith, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens were dram- 
atized. Melodrama increased in popularity and was 

68 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 69 

transferred from the Victoria and Grecian theatres to 
the Adelphi, Drury Lane, and Haymarket. It came to 
emphasize more the claims of justice and the rights of 
the poor. It called invention to its aid and used the 
new machinery and common haunts of city life — ma- 
chine shops, railroad trains, balloons, dock yards, coal 
mines, lifeboats. These melodramas were not entirely 
vicious. There was a crude truth in them, an insist- 
ence upon reality and the social bond. Of the dra- 
matists of the eighties all save Pinero had been 
tutored in melodrama. Among the great melodramas 
were Sims's The Lights o' London (1881), Sims's and 
Pettitt's The Harbour Lights (1886), Paul Merritt's 
and Henry Pettitt's great Drury Lane spectacle The 
World (1884), and H. A. Jones's The Silver King (1882). 
In Wilson Barrett's The Sign of the Cross (1895) melo- 
drama reached its climax. 

Little need be said of the minor dramatists of the 
decade. In his later years H. J. Byron falsified the 
"cup and saucer" play in the thin plot and strained 
situations of CyriVs Success (1868) and Our Boys 
(1875). His Wrinkles (1876), played by Mr. and Mrs. 
Bancroft, had better material in it but was unsuccessful 
with the audience. James Albery (1838-1889) was 
a man of imagination who scattered his efforts. In 
Pink Dominoes (1877), from the French of Hennequin 
and Delacour, he provided one of the wittiest of naughty 
farces, in Oriana (1873) one of the most beautiful 
of fairy plays, and in Tivo Roses (1870) the vehicle 
by which Henry Irving had his first success with the 
public. W. G. Wills (1828-1891), Irish dramatist, 



70 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

journalist, and portrait painter, after 1872 dramatist 
of the Lyceum Theatre under Bateman, tried to bring 
back the horrors of the Gothic school. He adapted 
Media in Corinth from Euripides into bad blank verse, 
provided Irving one of his worst parts in Charles I 
(1872), and in Juana gave Madame Modjeska a 
play of renunciation and madness. His Claudian, 
Princess's Theatre (1883), was a nine days' wonder. 
In two of his adaptations, Jane Eyre (1882), and Olivia 
(1885) from Goldsmith's novel, The Vicar of Wake- 
field, Wills is at his best. 

H. C. Merivale (1839-1906) always adapted or col- 
laborated. Like Wills and Albery he was searching for 
a method, which he never found. Perhaps his best 
work was in the melodrama. The White Pilgrim (1883), 
from a legend by Gilbert a Beckett, and Forget-me-not 
(1879). Like his fellows, Merivale was guilty of 
some astounding lapses of tact. Among these are his 
modernizations of Faust under the title The Cynic 
(1882) and Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship under the 
title The Lord of the Manor (1880). 

Demanding a little more serious consideration is 
Robert Buchanan (1841-1901). Before he began 
to write for the stage Buchanan was the writer of 
novels, verse, and criticism. He is now chiefly remem- 
bered for his attack on Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelites 
in his essay on The Fleshly School of Poetry (1871), an 
offense for which he tried later to atone. He began 
to write for the stage in 1880 in A Nine Days' Queen, a 
pathetic treatment of Lady Jane Grey in blank verse. 
He dramatized his own novels, The Shadow of the 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 71 

Sword (1881) and God and the Man, the latter as Storm- 
beaten (1883). While writing other melodramas with 
G. R. Sims he turned again to adaptation. From his 
adaptation of Lady Clare (1885), from George Ohnet's 
Le Maitre de Forges, he gained some notoriety on ac- 
count of a conflict of rights with Pinero. He adapted 
Sophia (1886) and Joseph's Sweetheart (1888) from 
Fielding's Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews; adapted 
Clarissa Harlowe; Miss Tomboy (1890) from Van- 
brugh's Relapse; The Sixth Commandment (1890) from 
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Arthur Symons 
called Buchanan a soldier of fortune, who wrote always 
for the market, his criticism a kind of fighting journal- 
ism : " like most fighters he fought because he could 
not think." 

We now come to consider the work of two men of 
higher rank. Both W. S. Gilbert and Sydney Grundy 
were dominated throughout their Hves by the desire 
to do the better things. Yet there is upon the work 
of both these men the sign of perplexity. Only Gil- 
bert works out of doubt into an acceptable medium. 
This perplexity was characteristic of all of the work 
of the theatre of the period. They were few indeed 
who, like Irving and the Bancrofts, found a stable 
platform upon which to do their best work. Of the 
two chief dramatists of the transition period, Gilbert 
found his way into musical fantasy and remained there. 
Sydney Grundy, in many respects the precursor of 
the later writers of serious drama, displayed an early 
ambition beyond his time, but failed to grow with his 
time. 



72 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911), a Bachelor 
of Arts of London University, and barrister at law at 
twenty-two, was a descendant of Sir Humphrey Gil- 
bert and son of William Gilbert, a man of strong 
personality, a surgeon and a novelist. Like many 
other playwrights of the century he got his start 
on the stage by way of burlesque and service on the 
comic papers. Not successful with Punch, in 1861 
he joined H. J. Byron's magazine. Fun, and contrib- 
uted to it hundreds of columns of verse and satire. 
His Bab Ballads (1869) and More Bah Ballads (1873) 
first brought him fame. Having been asked by Miss 
Herbert of the St. James's Theatre for a Christmas 
piece in a fortnight, Gilbert wrote in ten days a bur- 
lesque on L'Elisir d'Amore, entitled Dulcamara; or, 
The Little Duck and the Great Quack. The success of 
this piece led to a burlesque on La Figlia del Reggi- 
mento entitled La Vivandiere for J. L. Toole, which 
ran for one hundred and twenty nights at the Queen's 
Theatre, one on The Bohemian Girl entitled Merry 
Zingara and a burlesque of Robert the Devil for Miss 
Nellie Farren. All these were successful. Having 
been determined for some time "to try the experiment 
of a blank-verse burlesque in which a picturesque 
story should be told in a strain of mock heroic serious- 
ness," he undertook to treat Tennyson's Princess with- 
out "willful irreverence." The piece, produced at 
the Olympic (1870), was an instant success. It was 
followed by an adaptation, under the title The Pal- 
ace of Truth, of Madame le Genlis's story Le Palais 
de la Veriie, a subject suggested to Gilbert by Mr. 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 73 

Palgrave Simpson. With this play, produced at the 
Haymarket with Mr. Buckstone in the cast, his real 
career began. Thereafter he wrote all kinds of plays, 
comedies, farces, melodramas, social dramas, verse 
tragedies, absurdities, writing under his own name 
and the pseudonym of F. L. Tomline. Even after 
Trial by Jury had opened up his richest vein of success 
in musical comedy, Gilbert continued to attempt to 
write serious plays. His last play. The Hooligan, is 
a sordid tragedy far removed from the delicate fantasy 
of his Savoy operas. 

There can be seen in Gilbert's work as a whole signs 
of indecision. The wielder of one of the most subtle 
forms of popular dramatic art, Gilbert was never able 
to rest upon his main achievements with security. 
Men were impatient of the thing the times most 
needed in the theatre — the gift of personality, the 
contribution of an individual outlook. A stage author 
was expected to satisfy the standards of the past, to 
cut his cloth by outworn patterns. He was by no 
means encouraged to discover and to give himself. 
Meanwhile all the serious temptations were in the 
direction of conventional comedy and verse plays. 
It was not until Gilbert had essayed these and found 
them changing under his hand to the form of his own 
personal gift that his work came to display the marks 
of the master. 

When Gilbert began to write the musical play, 
this form held an even lower position than it holds 
to-day. The Christmas pantomimes and burlesque 
had collapsed. The fairy play had seen its day and 



74 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OP ENGLAND 

was confused with the tricks of extravaganza. All 
the available legends had been debased to the uses of 
the ballet and the three-act burlesque. The Offenbach 
operas with Meilhac and Halevy librettos had never 
found an appropriate place in England. French opera 
bouffe reached its height in England with Le Consent 
(1870) ; La Belle Helene (1871 and 1873) ; Falscappa 
{Les Brigands) (1871) ; Madame VArchiduc (1876), 
witty but alien entertainments of no real significance. 

What was that gift of personality which after many 
experiments Gilbert was to make to the stage? By 
many this gift is said to lie in Gilbert's tendency to 
see life in a topsy-turvy way. This is a superficial 
explanation of his genius. Gilbert was no mere handler 
of mental shockers. His contribution was a specific 
that cleared the air of lingering but moribund ideas, 
that settled the odors of yesterday's feasts of reason 
and soul. He had a renovating imagination. Hardly 
a satirist, for he did not attack or even point a meaning, 
he simply provided a new atmosphere and a new light. 

The renovating quality of Gilbert's genius was 
closely associated with his aesthetic sensibilities. All 
the positions he took were the result of artistic judg- 
ments. As he happened to be dealing with the ma- 
terials of a frayed and tattered stage, many of Gil- 
bert's aesthetic judgments were reactions against false 
standards in art. He expresses in his art Pater's 
dictum, "The way to perfection is through a series 
of disgusts." Nothing was more common than bur- 
lesque on the stage. Little was left to be accom- 
plished by mere exaggeration and incongruity. Gil- 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 75 

bert subjected everything, particularly the formulas of 
art, to the judgment of a cheerful taste. He added 
silvery laughter to satire. Executioners, pirates, 
death, bridegrooms, kings, aesthetes, fairy lovers 
received the same sunny critical regard without im- 
proper emphasis and without distortion. 

The one thing against which Gilbert's taste turned 
with unerring force was the convention of literary 
love. From the first Gilbert had shown himself 
incapable of dealing sympathetically with the themes 
of the heart. In Broken Hearts, in Gretchen he had 
tried to tell love stories, but the result is metallic 
and forced. When he came to his operas he played 
upon every string of affection save that of pure feel- 
ing. His reaction against the romantic theme was 
strengthened by the fact that real love was ceasing 
to subject itself to expression under the methods of 
sentiment. Love had been shown by the analysts in 
fiction to involve other things, passions, problems, 
inhibitions, for which the romantic method had no 
expression. Sweethearts, one of the best of Gilbert's 
plays, is successful because the love shown is silent, 
forgetful, and cruel. He ends his operas with a brace 
of matings lightly engaged in ; throughout their action 
couples exchange easily. All love is but the material 
of laughter. 

Gilbert's earliest plays are concerned with the 
search for truth in a world of false shows. First he 
tries to reveal it by turning the world upside down. 
An early play was entitled Topsyturvydom (1874). 
He soon discards the topsy-turvy method for the 



76 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

deeper search for the truth that is involved but hidden 
in all things. Throughout his life it was his passion 
to find the hidden principle behind the surfaces of 
life. He makes this effort in The Palace of Truth, in 
Engaged, in Pygmalion and Galatea, in Broken Hearts, 
in The Wicked World. He uses all the formulas by 
which the older story-tellers resolved the dualism of 
existence, enchanted islands, palaces of truth, fairy 
correspondences, the elixir dropped in the eye, the 
statue coming to life. All these expedients are palpable 
enough. Indeed, they hardly satisfy Coleridge's de- 
mand for the arbitrary suspension of disbelief, so ap- 
parent are their methods, so little do they surprise 
us into a sudden accession of sight. 

When Gilbert comes to his later work and drops 
the topsy-turvy principle, he drops as well the machin- 
ery by which he justifies his search. And he makes 
the search self-justifying. He now becomes less 
didactic, less fearful that truth will elude him, less 
convinced that it is necessary that he shall see it in 
order to be sure of its existence. Truth whether of 
the taste or the mind eludes the sterner searchings. 
But it responds to the lighter fancy. And it was 
fancy pure and simple that Gilbert brings to his later 
plays. His whimsies were not vagaries, not paradoxes, 
not mere cheap quips. The Savoy operas, even apart 
from their music, come nearer to the adequate adjust- 
ment of form to sense than any other work written 
for the theatre in their period. 

Before Gilbert came to command of his mode, he 
busied himself imitating other men and attempting 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 77 

to force his art into uncongenial molds. Of the short 
plays written for Miss Marie Lytton's management 
of the Court Theatre, 1871, the most that need be 
said is that they lacked distinction. In Charity (1874) 
he deals with a serious theme. It is a story that 
has a strong foretaste of the temper of H. A. Jones, 
with a sufficient complement of lost papers, exposures, 
counter exposures, and puns from the scrip of H. J. 
Byron. Dan'l Bruce, Blacksmith (1876) is a melo- 
drama with nautical leanings on a theme suggested 
by George Eliot's Silas Marner. Nothing distin- 
guishes this from the ordinary melodrama with the 
exception of the knack shown for the handling of 
archaic atmosphere. Gilbert continued to write thrill- 
ers even after the great success of his operas. Comedy 
and Tragedy, written for Miss Mary Anderson and 
played at the Lyceum Theatre, 1884, is a well-made 
"strong scene" play of one act, of a pattern directly 
imported from France. Some of the most surprising 
lapses of Gilbert's taste are seen in his adaptations 
of the work of other poets. For Gretchen (1879), an 
adaptation of Goethe's Faust, Gilbert did not even 
have the excuse of burlesque. Nor is there any more 
excuse for his Rosencrantz and Guildenstem. 

Of Gilbert's prose plays three stand out for especial 
consideration. All proceed from an attitude of thor- 
ough disillusion in matters of life and art. The best 
of these is Sweethearts (Prince of Wales's, 1874). This 
play has been so often misrepresented on the stage as 
a sentimental play, that one is likely to forget that it 
is based upon an ironic view of human nature and a 



78 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

thorough determination not to surrender to romantic 
tricks. The play develops from the refusal of a young 
man and a young woman to express their love. Al- 
most entirely without intrigue, the play depends upon 
the natural emotions, the bashfulness of love that 
could not speak, a young girl's unconscious cruelty of 
coquetry, and the later cruelty of forgetfulness on 
the part of the man. As a background for the action 
there is the spirit of time and growth — difficult things 
to put into dramatic form — which is symbolized 
by the growing sycamore, and the aggregations of 
semi-detached villas about the old house. 

Tom Cobb; or, Fortune's Toy, a farcical comedy 
(1875), can be compared with nothing so well as with 
a Shavian comedy. A borrowing Irishman, impecu- 
nious surgeons, a heroine turned nine-and-twenty, 
and a feminine aesthete are the chief characters. Ma- 
tilda's love affairs are used by her father as sources 
of loans, and Caroline EflBngham is as keen to secure 
a poet for an ideal lover as she is to secure a financial 
arrangement in a case of breach of promise. Most 
of the characters are given to large talk. The plot 
is based without defense on the vagaries of nonsense. 
And everything on earth is travestied, — love, the 
theatre, affectations of refinement in art, doctors, Irish- 
men, and soldiers. 

Engaged, produced at the Haymarket Theatre 
(1877), is a melodramatic farce made up of train 
wrecks, elopements to Gretna Green, and legacies 
left on hard conditions. None of the characters is 
misled by an emotion or a principle. All understand 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 79 

each other. The play shreds to pieces the clap-trap 
of stage romantic love. Vows are exchanged in cold 
reckoning. Affections are transferred as interest dic- 
tates. Cheviot Hill is of the family of Shaw's hard, 
conscienceless heroes. "I never loved three girls as 
I loved those three," he says. And Matilda goes him 
one better. Like Shaw's self-confident heroines she 
has worked out the budget of her life. " If you would 
be truly happy in the married state be sure you have 
your own way in everything. Brook no contradic- 
tions. Never yield to outside pressure. Give in 
to no argument. Admit no appeal. However wrong 
you may be, maintain a firm, resolute, and determined 
front." These plays were relatively successful on the 
stage on account of their daring lines and quick action. 
But the audiences did not understand them. The plays 
were as hard as adamant. The revelation of human 
nature was so acerbant as to amount to exposure. 

We come now to four verse plays which by use of 
a formal or traditional machinery illustrate Gilbert's 
search for the truth under the appearances of things. 
These four are The Palace of Truth (1870), Pygmalion 
and Galatea (1871), The Wicked World (1873), and 
Broken Hearts (1875). All are in blank verse. All 
depend upon a dualism as between the world of reality 
and the world of illusion in which we live. All save 
Pygmalion and Galatea are fairy plays. The Palace of 
Truth is a blank-verse fairy comedy based on a French 
original. Pygmalion and Galatea is based upon the 
classical story of the statue which is so loved by its 
sculptor that it comes to life. The Wicked World 



80 THE CONTEMPOILA.RY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

was derived from a story contributed by Gilbert to 
Hood's Annual, in which the idea of duahty of life is 
illustrated by creating a fairy world corresponding to the 
real world. The action takes place in the fairy world 
where the female fairies call to the heavens the earthly 
counterparts of the male fairies. Gilbert burlesqued 
his own Wicked World under the title The Happy 
Land (1873). Broken Hearts is an intrigue play, 
borrowing the machinery and form of a fairy 
play. It is dominated by the figure of a deformed 
dwarf, Mousta. The most beautiful touch in the 
play is the fancy which makes women who have lost 
the love of man take up the love of sundial and foun- 
tain and mirror. 

Though these plays had a certain vogue none of 
them was altogether successful. The blank verse 
in which they were written was not flexible enough 
for the demands of pure fancy; moreover, Gilbert 
had not yet learned how to handle his machinery of 
the fable. Nothing in the plays suggests anything 
other than a formal convention and yet we are asked 
to transport the mind to supernatural regions. Gal- 
atea's lapses from innocence to a cockney sophisti- 
cation might be funny if she had indeed come to life 
in a no-man's land either of stone or flesh. But they 
are simply vulgar considering that we are sure that 
she has never been stone at all, that she is a girl of 
the time demanding of us a self-deception we cannot 
practice. And yet there was something in these plays 
the stage had not had before. It was more than the 
gift of a fresh personality. It was the gift of an out- 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 81 

look which was honestly concerned with evaluating 
life. We shall see by what means in his next group 
Gilbert achieves the fitting form. 

Gilbert had first met Arthur Sullivan in 1871, but 
beyond a single burlesque, Thespis; or, The Gods from 
Old, the two did no work together until Trial by Jury 
in 1875. Then began the association that was to 
continue almost without break until the death of 
Sullivan. The first significance of the Savoy operas 
lies in the fact that Gilbert resolutely discards the 
outworn legends out of which the extravaganzas had 
been made. He creates his stories of commonplace 
materials which he endows with the qualities of fancy. 
After The Sorcerer, his second opera, he also discards 
the machinery of convention. There are no more 
enchanted regions, philters, or veils of illusion. When 
one steps into the theatre it is to meet real men and 
women who move about in a new lyrical and fanciful 
air. These people appear in their own dimensions 
but without the limitations of the commonplace. Gil- 
bert's stories center in the established institutions, 
the respected phantoms of the world, the dignitaries, 
admirals, peers, pirates, brigands, even the ghosts of 
historic castles. His fantasy was not a cutting off 
from the world. It was the application of a point of 
view to the world. There is neither impatience nor 
sorrow nor tragedy in this lyrical laughter region. 
Under the author's light touch come death and bribes, 
the loss of loved ones, and all pass off with a smile. 
When the Mikado hears that his son has been beheaded, 
he says, "Dear, dear, this is very tiresome.'* 



82 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND^ 

These themes of fancy are couched in a construction 
as careful as the most rigorous tragedy. Gilbert 
studied the design of his operas with care. Unlike 
many comic operas the story is perfectly articulate. 
The lyrics and chorus are parts of the play. Not a 
line is wasted ; not a lyric is dragged in for a purpose 
outside the structure. The lyrics themselves are 
remarkable for metrical and rhyming originality. 
More than this, they are all dramatic. 

Trial by Jury (1875), written with side hints on the 
famous Tichborne trial engaging interest at the time, 
was so successful that it led to the production of The 
Sorcerer at the Opera Comique in 1877 and the begin- 
ning of the Gilbert and Sullivan vogue. In The 
Sorcerer Gilbert uses for the last time a conventional 
expedient for the creation of his convention of inner 
sight. For this purpose he here uses the Midsummer 
Night's Dream instrument of a love philter for break- 
ing up social groups in the mating of the sexes. In 
this also occurs Gilbert's favorite jest, used again in 
The Mikado, of the bartering of life. With the next 
play, H. M. S. Pinafore; or, The Lass that Loved a Sailor 
(1878), Gilbert comes out of his experimental stage. 
This play treats fantastically England's pride in her 
Royal Navy. In it again the distinctions of birth, 
the power of love to level ranks, the call of duty, the 
thrill of patriotism, the fear of death are playfully 
treated. The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of 
Duty was produced in New York in 1879, while Gil- 
bert was visiting America, and transferred to London 
in the next year. Into the world of pirates is intro- 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 83 

duced a system of morality, a sense of duty and law 
that throw oblique rays on both law and pirates. As 
Gilbert's constructive imagination becomes more flex- 
ible his easy fun in lyric manipulation and rhyming 
increases. 

Oscar Wilde, while still a student at Oxford, at- 
tracted much attention to the new sestheticism. The 
affections of men and women turned away from sol- 
diers and manly sports to poets and artists. Gilbert's 
next play, Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride (1881), was 
dedicated to the two artistic schools represented by 
the two poets, Reginald Bunthorne, a Fleshly Poet, 
and- Archibald Grosvenor, an Idyllic Poet. Nothing 
more delicious has been seen on the stage than those 
scenes of "aesthetic transfiguration", in which the 
welter of influences of Florentine fourteenth century, 
the Venetian, the Japanese, the Early English blue 
china, is depicted. The languid love for lilies and 
lank limbs, the haggard cheeks of pre-Raphaelitism 
are ridiculed gracefully and without offense. Delight- 
ful is Sophia's cry, "You are not Empyrean. You 
are not Delia Cruscan. You are not even Early Eng- 
lish. Oh, be Early English, ere it is too late." In 
satiric conception as well as in design and in lyrical 
expression, this opera is perfect. 

With the next opera, lolanthe; or, The Peer and the 
Peri (1882), the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were 
transferred to the new Savoy Opera House. This 
play treats again the dangerous subjects of England's 
dignity and the majesty of law. The play delightfully 
shows a Lord Chancellor married to a fairy and mem- 



84 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

bers of the House of Lords singing their discussions. 
Contemporary critics claimed to see in it a serious 
note of protest for the poor, a moral mingling with 
the buffoonry. It is certain that the serious social 
interests of the day may have provided the author 
a point of departure, but critics showed their inability 
to understand Gilbert's work when they ascribed to 
him a note of pathos amounting to anger. In this 
play for the first time electricity was used in lighting 
the figures of the fairies by means of storage batteries 
on their backs. 

Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant (1884), is a revision 
of The Princess presented in 1870, and a "respectful 
operatic perversion" of Tennyson's poem. One of the 
daintiest of the Savoy operas, it lacks the lightness of 
fancy that others possessed. But such signs of fatigue 
as critics saw in this play were quickly dispelled by the 
next of the series. In The Mikado; or, The Town of 
Titipu (presented March 14, 1885) we have a work 
to place beside Patience as the two perfect works from 
Gilbert's pen. The poet had already satirized the 
Japanese influence. Here he was to appropriate it 
and transfigure it. In this the vein of refined nonsense 
is pushed to the limits of genius. The situation is 
pursued to its most remote illogical conclusion. Yet 
the story never for a moment escapes the author. 
The characters of Ko-Ko, of Pooh-Bah, of Nanki-Poo, 
and the three charming sprites, Yum Yum, Pitti Sing, 
and Peep-Bo, are universal poetry and fantasy. One 
may find in this all the commentaries on things in gen- 
eral he chooses to find. Or if he wishes he may see in 



DILA.MATISTS OF TRANSITION 85 

it simply a work of fanciful genius created out of a 
new fabric. 

Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse (1887), a super- 
natural opera of mortals and ghosts, uses more stage 
tricks than are usual in Gilbert's work. For this reason 
the play is not as general in value, though its immediate 
appeal was very great. The central idea threw more 
than a side light on some of the popular legends of the 
theatre. The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merry man 
and his Maid (1888) again jests with death and deals 
in a spirit of historic fantasy with a tale of heroism. 
The whole play is like an elaborated ballad. Indeed 
few modern ballads can excel Fairfax's song, "Is Life 
a Boon?" In The Gondoliers; or. The King of Bara- 
taria (1889) as in The Yeomen of the Guard, Gilbert 
takes a romantic conception of mistaken identity, 
and plays upon this with modern business ideas, and 
shows majesty in workaday attire. The Mountebanks 
(1892), with music by Alfred Cellier, marks a tempo- 
rary separation between Gilbert and Sullivan. This 
play treats the collapse of the outlaw business. Tech- 
nically it is chiefly noteworthy for its use of puppets. 
In Utopia, Limited; or. The Flowers of Progress (1893) 
Gilbert and Sullivan joined again. The play deals 
with an ideal land, "a Despotism tempered with 
Dynamite" which should realize the dreams of the 
reformers. Limited monarchs, joint stock companies, 
modern sociological lectures, government by party, 
reform of the drama are all adverted to. With this 
the series of Savoy operas came to an end. Save for 
His Excellency (1894), with music composed by Doctor 



86 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Osmond Carr, and The Grand Duke (1896), Gilbert 
wrote no more operas. The vein which he had so 
diligently mined had thinned. Though he continued 
to try his hand at playwriting the new activities of 
the nineties were strange to him. He died in 1911. 

The indebtedness of the stage to W. S. Gilbert can 
be appreciated only by one who recognizes the serious 
undercurrent of his humor. "All humor properly so 
called is based upon a grave and quasi-respectful treat- 
ment of the ludicrous ", he writes. Properly considered, 
Gilbert was a serious man, and his true tone is that of 
grace and urbanity rather than of jest. In addition 
to the debt owed to him as an author the theatre owes 
much to Gilbert for his rigorous standards, his firm 
insistence upon the rights of an author over a produc- 
tion, and his point-device artistry in play construc- 
tion and stage management. 

In Gilbert we have a man who worked his way 
through experiment and indecision into a method. 
In Sydney Grundy we have a man, perhaps no less 
honest, though certainly less gifted and adroit, who in 
spite of successive attempts still found himself turned 
back, beaten. Sydney Grundy was not a great play- 
wright. But he was ambitious, honest, industrious, 
bitten with the itch of perfection. He had an artistic 
conscience. And he had enough of a social conscience 
to make him wish to adapt the stage to the time. 
And yet his life falls into two unhappy periods. In 
the first he was too early ; in the second he was too 
late. He lacked the flexibility to adapt himself to 
the age. Grundy once wrote of Sims : " Among his 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 87 

many wonderful qualities, none is so marvelous as his 
Protean capacity for adapting himself to his oppor- 
tunities. He never attempts to alter circumstances; 
he patiently lets circumstances alter him." This 
ability that he finds in Sims, Grundy did not possess. 
He is always fighting his time or falling outside of it. 

Born in 1848 and well educated, Grundy is the last 
of the adapters. By 1882 he was considered by Archer 
one of the most promising of English dramatists. His 
first play, A Little Change, was produced by Mr. and 
Mrs. Kendal at the Hay market (1872). His adapta- 
tions, many of which were highly successful, include 
After Long Years (1879) from Scribe; The Snowball 
(1879) from Oscar, ou le mari qui trompe sa femme by 
Scribe and Duvergne; In Honour Bound (1880) from 
Scribe's Une Chaine; A Pair of Spectacles (1890) from 
LesPetits Oiseaux by Labiche and Delacour ; three adap- 
tations from Alexandre Dumas, pere ; Frocks and Frills 
(1902) from Les Droits de fees by Scribe and Legouve ; 
Business is Business (1905) from Octave Mirbeau's 
Les Affaires sont les affaires; The Diplomatists (1905) 
from La Poudre aux yeux by Labiche. As adapter of 
these plays, Grundy deserves more than the credit 
that goes to the purveyor. He was the entrepreneur 
between France and England. In The Snowball he 
introduced much of that ingenuity in high comedy 
that Pinero has represented in his best work. In 
In Honour Bound, the story of a husband wittily and 
pointedly cross-examining a young man who has been 
the lover of his wife, while the new fiancee stands ready 
to enter the room, we have the theme of The Profligate 



88 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

and The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. A Pair of Spectacles 
was one of the most popular plays of the generation. 
In Mammon (1877), from Feuillet's Montjoye, he gives 
us one of the first financiers of modern drama. Sir 
Geoffrey Heriott is a true business man who is really 
concerned in business rather than a romantic figure 
playing with affairs. This interest in business and 
practical matters comes out again in Business is Busi- 
ness and in The Glass of Fashion. 

As an original dramatist Grundy set himself to learn 
the lessons of his masters. His dialogue was crisp, 
straightforward, expository, lacking in puns and word 
play, polished to a needle fineness. It was meticulous 
beyond the standards of speech or of writing. A 
critic has said that he wrote all his plays with a pencil 
sharpened to a fine point. The point was so sharp 
that it was brittle. From Grundy's study of his 
French models there came his technique of the down- 
ward sweep in construction. The play begins at its 
highest point, and the whole progress is toward catas- 
trophe at the end. This type, which had been prac- 
tised by Scribe and Dumas and Meilhac and Halevy, 
had been introduced into England in Frou-Frou 
(1870) and in a version of Camille (1880). Grundy 
very early attempts to introduce the unhappy ending 
of death into his adaptations and original plays. This 
he does in A Bunch of Violets and A Fool's Paradise, 
and Pinero and Jones do the same after him, but no one 
has succeeded in making the English audience accept 
the climacteric death. 

In his own playwriting Grundy was dominated by a 



DRAMATISTS OF TRANSITION 89 

moral motive. He attempted to combine the technique 
of Scribe with the moral intensity of a Norwegian 
or a German dramatist. So though his plays are well 
constructed, their excellence has little to do with ob- 
servation of real life. The Glass of Fashion (1883) 
is a newspaper play dealing with the follies and cor- 
ruption of society. The Dean's Daughter (1888) lashes 
aristocratic failings, and the worldliness of the church. 
A Fool's Paradise (1889), acted as The Mousetrap in 
America, is a strong, consistent story of a flirt who 
tries to put her husband out of the way in behalf of 
a fatal love she has for another. Grundy's gift of cyni- 
cism is shown in the ending of the play. When dis- 
covered in her designs Mousie takes the poison herself 
and, with a cool "Good night to all of you", goes out 
to die. In Sowing the Wind (1893) we have a story of 
illegitimate children; in The Old Jew (1894) and The 
New Woman (1894) veracious characters are set in im- 
possible situations. Grundy continued to write plays 
until well into the new century. Later plays were 
Slaves of the Ring (1894), The Greatest of These (1895), 
The Degenerates (1899), and A Debt of Honour (1900). 
While Grundy had the will to truth, he had not the 
insight of truth. His themes are all themes of the 
theatre. He was a good workman, but he failed be- 
cause he was neither artist nor thinker. 



CHAPTER VI 
Henry Arthur Jones 

In Grundy we see the modern dramatist accepting 
the challenge of his environment and defeated by it. 
In Henry Arthur Jones we have the first example of a 
dramatist who secures a measure of success by fighting 
his environment. Following Matthew Arnold, Jones 
recognized that the problem of the theatre lies in the 
hearts and wills of men. All his energy has been used 
in an appeal to men's hearts and wills for the building 
of a better theatre. 

Henry Arthur Jones, born at Grandborough, Bucks, 
in 1851, received a common school education. His 
first play. Only Round the Corner, was produced at 
Exeter in 1878. This was followed by several one-act 
plays, of which A Clerical Error (1879) was the first 
produced in London. Jones's first long plays, all of 
melodramatic order, were written in collaboration with 
Henry Herman or Wilson Barrett. His first success 
came with the melodrama. The Silver King (1882). 
With Saints and Sinners (1884) he set the note for 
much of his later work, and with Jiidah (1890) he 
emerged into the first rank of British dramatists. 

90 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 91 

As early as 1882 Archer recognized Jones for his 
"earnestness of purpose" and four years later stated 
that it was his desire, "according to his lights, to 
produce good work; and he strives after other lights 
than the footlights." 

From the start Jones had upon him the council of 
good works. He was one of the first to realize the 
potency of the play in social reform. As a dramatist 
he seldom lets slip an opportunity to pass judgment 
on his fellows. This social-mindedness which he dis- 
plays as a playwright characterizes all his thinking 
on the theatre. His first production in London had 
taken place the year in which Arnold had sounded his 
clarion, "The theatre is irresistible; organize the 
theatre." Thenceforward Jones devoted himself to 
this cause. Jones became a propagandist for the 
theatre in the same spirit in which Ruskin and Morris 
had become propagandists for art. He saw the social 
obligation of the dramatist, the social possibilities of 
the play, and he saw too that these obligations and 
opportunities were violated by the condition of the 
theatre in his time. He proceeded to make appeal on 
behalf of the theatre to the only powers that could 
bring forth a new theatre, the minds and the hearts of 
the people themselves. 

The dramatist set himself to the solution of two 
problems in the organization of the theatre. The first 
of these is the official problem and has to do with the 
relationship between the theatre and the State. The 
second is the social problem and has to do with the 
building of a theatre in the midst of the new society 



92 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

of the world. Of these two the first is far less impor- 
tant than the second and more simple to handle. It 
is concerned with such matters as copyright protection, 
the licensing of theatres, the censorship, and projects 
of national support. The problems of copyright and 
music hall license were satisfactorily solved. Only the 
censorship and the problem of the national theatre are 
left to vex the dramatist. But the unofficial and social 
situation presents a permanent problem of increasing 
difficulty. 

More vigorous and captious than the censorship of 
the king's reader of plays, is the censorship of the 
English audience. Mrs. Grundy, sitting in the pit 
of an English theatre, wields the final power over the 
dramatist's work. And the pit is no ready listener to 
any direct appeal, to any rational statement of the 
issues. Jones set himself first to find out what laws, 
if any, underlie the reactions of the public toward a 
play, and then to raise the standard of those laws by 
direct appeal. 

In endeavoring to reach the ear and mind of the au- 
dience, Jones has used all the channels of publicity. He 
indulged in an advertising campaign in behalf of good 
plays. In this spirit he helped to establish the Play- 
goers Club in 1884, wrote articles in The Nineteenth 
Century and the New Review, prefaces to Saints and 
Sinners and The Case of Rebellious Susan, addressed 
audiences of workingmen and students in England and 
America, and engaged in debates in print and on the 
platform. In 1895 he issued The Renascence of the 
English Drama and in 1912 Foundations of a National 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 93 

Drama, discussing in these volumes such subjects as 
drama and the mob, education and the theatre, religion, 
the provinces, and censorship. 

The characteristics that Jones shows in his campaign- 
ing he shows also in his plays. His plays may be traced 
definitely to English root. He refers often contemp- 
tuously to the "lob-worm symbolic school" of Norwe- 
gian drama. Owing little to the Continent, outside of 
the stimulation of examples and a push toward a sex 
interest, his plays are in structure and character 
thoroughly English. Neither in thought nor in tech- 
nique does he show more than a glimmer of the ideas 
for which Ibsen was striving. In spite of an appear- 
ance of revolt, his plays defend the status quo, they 
go down to no absolutes of judgment, they are pungent 
exposes of surfaces that involve no fundamental search- 
ing. Jones has given us a picture of the English mind 
of the time as confused and full of moral pockets as the 
original, and yet it is the best picture of the middle- 
class mind that we have in the theatre. 

As a dramatist Jones subordinates everything to a 
sociological interest. Though he is interested in 
perfecting the instrument of his craft his intellectual 
prepossession seems to lie outside the art in the sub- 
stance of society. For this reason his work has a cer- 
tain tangential twist. He seems to be aiming at some 
point outside of the structure of the play itself. Most 
of his plays have a large and carefully worked out 
social background in which the action itself is 
dwarfed. When he builds a play around a character, 
that character is an embodied point of view, a crux 



94 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

in the social fabric. Jones's code of play construc- 
tion is evolved from his own necessities rather than 
from a study of the well-made play or the codes of 
naturalism. For this reason his plays refuse to cata- 
logue under schools or influences. He maintains 
throughout his career many of the characteristics of 
melodrama with which he began. His plays are 
spread over long spaces of time. The action seldom 
proceeds in sequence of events from beginning to end. 
A mark of Jones's diagrammatic mind is found in 
his handling of characters. In trying to make his 
characters representative he has fallen into formulas. 
His favorite man seems to be a priestly ascetic, an 
artist, scientist, explorer, or minister who revolts 
against the frivolity of the age and yet is led with total 
lack of wisdom into the arms of folly. Another char- 
acter is the middle-class tradesman, sufficiently pros- 
perous, who has elected himself guardian of the morality 
of the community. Jones usually presents his trades- 
men in groups and too often under their respectable 
robes they are badly spotted with sin. Above all Jones 
has prided himself on his women. He has given us 
all kinds of women except the "eternal womanly." 
Customary figures are a temperamental woman, a girl 
self-willed, a siren, an adventuress, a pagan, a woman 
misled by revenge, or ennui, or tipsy with frivolity. 
Frail as these women may be, Jones's strong man 
always succumbs to them. Last among his types is 
that of the aged baronet who has gone the "fin de 
sihile" pace and has come forth safe on the other side 
and is calm and understanding and helpful to 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 95 

mesdames and men. Adept at putting hand on 
shoulder, with plenty of time from great duties to 
patch up domestic rows, talkative fellows, these 
noblemen have a certain urbane charm. 

In one particular sense Jones makes his structure 
typical of the time. The world he presents is a show 
world. Its doctrine is appearances. Its punishments 
are meted out to those who violate the code of front. 
It is not hypocrisy that he attacks but the assumption 
that anything else is the code. Hypocrisy is the means 
by which the ideal is kept alive. He takes the text of 
The Triumph of the Philistines from Ecclesiastes "Be 
not righteous overmuch; why should 'st thou destroy 
thyself"; and from The Pilgrim's Scrip for another 
play he quotes " Expediency is man's wisdom ; doing 
right is God's." Taking this pragmatic doctrine, 
Jones adapts a code of play writing to it. This code 
rejects the absolute values, asks no support from right 
or the sense of duty, but rests upon the law that only 
those who conform can be happy. The movement of 
most of Jones's plays is directed either to the weaving 
of a nice veil of appearances around dubious scenes or 
to showing that the bad appearances were misleading. 
The cardinal sins of society are in Jones's plays car- 
dinal sins still. Courageous as he is in attacking the 
Philistine, he throws him no deep challenge of doctrine. 
Jones's doctrine of appearances is shown in the theat- 
rical use he makes of confessions. As his final stand- 
ard does not lie within the man but outside him, 
the final solution comes through adjustment not to 
one's own sense of right but to the crowd. It need 



96 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

not be said that the confession scenes of Saints and 
Sinners and Michael and his Lost Angel have a strong 
theatrical value. But they have another value. A 
public confession is an admission of the right of 
the crowd to an interest in the affair, Jones's 
confession scenes are surrenders to philistinism. In 
this way his social predilections extend even to his 
technique. 

As the characteristics of melodrama qualify all of 
Jones's work, it may be worth our while to ask what 
are the qualities of melodrama. These are : First, 
it is governed by force rather than by sentiment or 
emotion. Second, the story is developed by action, 
circumstance, and "machinery" rather than by the 
tracing of motives or personal revelation. Third, the 
characters are types, each one revealing the average 
characteristics of the group he represents. Fourth, 
within the types they are arranged by the most rudi- 
mentary of moral divergences. The struggle is always 
between the good and the bad, and all characters ally 
themselves with one or the other party. Fifth, the 
action of melodrama takes place upon a plastic stage. 
It involves many and rapid changes of scene and action, 
in following which it calls upon the assistance of the 
imagination. All these characteristics are found in 
Jones's work. 

The Silver King, the most successful melodrama of 
modern times, was written by Jones in collaboration 
with Henry Herman, and produced by Wilson Barrett 
at the Princess's Theatre, November 16, 1882. Not in 
itself a work of great originality it displayed remi- 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 97 

niscences of Fitzball's melodrama, Jonathan Bradford; 
of Monte Cristo, in the enrichment of the protagonist 
through a mine ; of Les Miserahles, in the element of 
character reform ; and of German sentimental plays, 
in the loving parent hovering about the children he 
dare not acknowledge. It has all the favorite proper- 
ties of melodrama in its racing stable, sailors' retreat, 
faithful servants, jealous and unprincipled loves, evic- 
tion for non-payment of rent, false accusations of 
murder, and criminals who turn informer. But with 
all that was old there was much that was new. There 
was in the play a warmth and vitaHty of imagination 
not before found, a personal pressure amounting to an 
intense moral outlook. The most important new note 
in this play was the note of conscious self-regeneration. 
Denver's impassioned cry, "Oh, God, put back thy 
Universe and give me yesterday", is rhetoric indeed, 
but it is rhetoric born out of the passion of life. In 
this note the play differs from its predecessors. It is 
not a case here as in Jonathan Bradford, Lights o' 
London, or Taken from Life, of an innocent man accused 
of a crime he had not committed. Denver is under the 
impression that he had committed the crime, and his 
subsequent repentance and self-redemption take their 
real meaning from this opinion. 

Jones tells us that the success of The Silver King 
freed him to write as he pleased. In his next play, 
Saints and Sinners, produced at the Vaudeville Theatre, 
September 25, 1884, he assumes the role of the social 
critic. In that it threw the theatre into the arena of 
public discussion this play occupies a historic position. 



98 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

In form the play still has characteristics of melodrama. 
It is a seduction play with characters balanced between 
the "good" and the "bad" people. It moves through 
nine scenes. Its spirit is rhetorical and expansive. 
But it goes beyond melodrama in many respects. The 
value of action is reduced in behalf of the value of 
moral intention. The characters are no longer stalking 
figures. Jacob Fletcher, the minister, has the literary 
qualities of the Vicar of Wakefield plus a modern 
fighting idealism. Hoggard and Prabble are Jones's 
symbols of the middle class. Most significant of all 
as a moral figure is Fanshawe. By all models Jones 
had simply to show Fanshawe ending as he had begun 
in selfish cynicism. The author gains nothing for the 
play by making his seducer repent. But Jones makes 
Fanshawe human and endows him with morality. 
In so doing he raises the moral value of the play. 
Jones consistently disclaims any influence from Ibsen. 
But it is difficult to see how his attack upon the respect- 
able institutions of society can be dissociated from 
the influence of Ibsen's Pillars of Society. The play 
surrenders to another foreign influence in that there 
is added to the melodramatic movement of the play a 
denouement taken from France. At the end of the 
play Letty dies after the fashion of the sinning heroines 
of French drama. 

After Hoodman Blind (1885) and The Noble Vaga- 
bond (1886), both rural melodramas with nothing to 
commend them but crowded action and strong spirits, 
Jones wrote The Middleman (1889) and Wealth (1889). 
These plays represent Jones's attempt to treat the 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 99 

modern world of industry, its capitalists and its laborers, 
by the methods of melodrama. The attempt was a 
worthy one and in the case of the first play achieved 
considerable success. Wealth was regarded by the 
Times as grappling more uncompromisingly than any 
contemporary play "with a social problem of vital 
interest." In Matthew Ruddock, the iron-founder, 
Jones created a prototype of Galsworthy's John An- 
thony in Strife. But the author had not learned to 
handle with restraint a serious situation. The play 
collapses in the third act in melodrama and madness. 

Jones was attempting to discard the code of melo- 
drama. His plays continued to be forthright and 
vigorous, but the author was learning to handle other 
formulas. He now undertook to criticize society 
through a key-character whose effectiveness in his 
environment suggests the governing motives and 
weaknesses of men. The character is often a woman 
who wreaks havoc through her handling of the weapons 
of sex, or he is a charlatan who prospers on society's 
willingness to be deceived. At first Jones tried to 
treat these themes in a serious way. This effort led 
him into many of his violations of taste. As he pro- 
ceeded he learned that the motive of the temptress 
and the impostor require comic treatment. Then began 
his better studies of eccentric character and his comedy 
of social groups. 

In Judah (1890) we have the first play in which 
Jones's rather simple moral judgments are brought 
into contact with perplexity. This play contains a 
full coterie of characteristic Jones traits. It has the 



100 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

priestly hero in Judah Llewellyn, the impostor in 
Dethic; and the tantalizing pagan in Vashti Dethic. 
The theme is treated with extreme seriousness. 

The Dancing Girl, produced January 15, 1891, at the 
Haymarket Theatre by ]Mr. Beerbohm Tree, displays 
again the characteristics of melodrama turned to moral 
uses. The sinning nobleman, the courageous superin- 
tendent, the heartbroken father, the "big scene", are 
paraphernalia of melodrama. The strong plea for 
social justice, the motive of character regeneration, 
the expiating death at the end belong to another order 
of play. And to another order still belongs the char- 
acter of the "pagan" Drusilla, one of the first embodi- 
ments of the "right to life" motive in English drama. 
Drusilla is a carefully drawn type of the woman 
tempter. But we cannot escape the idea that she is 
something more. She is an embodiment of the testing 
and disintegrating forces of the present day. Love 
has now become more than a romantic episode. It has 
become a test of the fiber of the individual. Herein 
lies one explanation of the frequent treatment of sex 
in recent plays. It is not only that sex takes a large 
place in life, but that in sex attraction and repulsion 
there can be epitomized the attractions and repulsions 
of social intercourse. Drusilla represents the dow^lfalI 
of the Duke of Guisebury, and through him the suffer- 
ing of the whole island dependent upon him and the 
jeopardizing of explorers in the Arctic circle. As 
Guisebury clears her out of his life his character be- 
comes stronger. Finally the neglected breakwaters of 
his life are all rebuilt. 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 101 

With The Tempter (1893), a verse play in which he 
follows Wills and Gilbert in trying to adapt the Me- 
phisto motive to the nineteenth century, Jones's period 
of melodrama comes to an end. Before he finally 
achieved a competent handling of comedy he created 
another type of play to which one may apply the title 
the " house in order *' play. The idea of tables turned 
is one of the commonest in drama. Jones applies 
this turn of plot to social and moral issues, endowing 
it with a significance in character probing that had 
not before been seen. This interest is found in Saints 
and Sinners. It is found again in Michael and His 
Lost Angel and The Hypocrites. Pinero uses it in 
His House in Order and with greater technical variety 
in The Gay Lord Quex. 

On Michael and His Lost Angel few critics agree. 
Some place it at the head of Jones's work. Others 
consider it one of the poorest of his plays. In struc- 
ture it is solid and workmanlike, but its theme is 
forced and its temper bitter. The characters are 
Jones's conventional figures of the ascetic and the 
temptress. Neither Michael nor Audrie is a real 
character. They are driven into the action by the 
author's force. The dialogue is lyrical with a note 
of awe and pity. The author has done all possible to 
endow the play with tragedy except to give it truth 
and significance. As it is, all we can see in it is the 
sordid downfall of weaklings. Even in structure the 
play is highly mechanical. The situation turns back 
upon itself in the most arbitrary way. The outcome 
of the play is reached only by many coincidences, and 



102 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND" 

not even the author's word will make us believe in 
the death of Audrie. 

Jones's most significant forward step was taken when 
he undertook the comedy of social groups. It must 
have become evident to him that for severe social 
censure neither romance nor melodrama was appro- 
priate. At the end of the century there had developed 
a spirit of recklessness, of moral release, of cynical 
materialism not unlike that of two centuries before. 
For the treatment of this mood the high and cold con- 
ventions of comedy of manners were necessary. Jones 
proceeds to undertake for his time the task of Con- 
greve. His comedies compare with Congreve's as the 
forthright vulgarity of the nineteenth century compares 
with the graceful naughtiness of the seventeenth. 

Jones began his comedj'^ career in The Crusaders 
(1891), a bluff satire on the reform movements in the 
England of the end of the century. Again we have a 
priestly "Shelley from Peckham Rye", wise enough 
to evolve a scheme to reform London, but not wise 
enough to protect himself in a silly intrigue ; we have 
the crudely conceived caricatures, Palsam, and Figg 
and Jawle ; we have Lord Burnham, a statesman of 
infinite patience. Behind an inconsequential story we 
gain a good sense of the quarrels, the compromises, 
the ineffectiveness of organized reform. The Triumph 
of the Philistines (1895) was a criticism of the attitude 
of the English people toward art. There is no doubt 
that the author had in mind another art than sculpture, 
over which Mr. Jorgan was at the time exercising a good 
deal of control. Over against the caricatures of Jorgan 



HENEY ARTHUR JONES 103 

and Skewett, Wapes, Blagg, and their fellows, and Miss 
Soar, he places one of his unique creations, Sally Le- 
brune, presumably a French girl, but in reality a figure 
representing his idea of the free joyousness of life. 
Sally is almost impossibly a puppet. The author uses 
her to effect his favorite trick of "turning the tables" 
on Mr. Jorgan. Sir Valentine is the most healthy 
example of Jones's "transcendental" style of hero. 
He is the one hero of this type who is enriched by his 
experiences. 

The Rogue's Comedy (1896) belongs to the class of 
impostor plays of which Judah is the first example. It 
is the rather patent story of Bailey Prothero, a society 
fortune teller, and reveals some of the sterner stuff that 
underlies the tinsel of the fakir. Actually this is a 
piece of foolery on the credulity of men and their wild 
passion for speculation, and the organization of com- 
panies of whatever kind. This is one of the most sus- 
tained of Jones's comedies. 

The Masqueraders (1894) is, among all Jones's come- 
dies, the one which most challenges comparison with 
the great comedies of the language. One feels in the 
atmosphere of this play something of the hard note of 
Congreve's The Way of the World. In it the author's 
imagination is almost free from the limitations of his 
fixed ideas. He seems to be here more of the observer, 
more of the dramatist than elsewhere. We have again 
the familiar types. Dulcie Larondie is a pagan plus 
moral sensibilities. David Remon is of the large 
family of Michael and Judah. Though an astronomer 
and experienced man of the world, he can philosophi- 



104 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

cally discount the value of all things, make himself the 
slave of a barmaid, and win her faithful love in return. 
The play is supported by some scenes of very great 
stress. This critic does not agree with those who rail 
at Montagu auctioning off the kisses of a barmaid or 
at that stronger scene of the game of cuts by which 
Dulcie Larondie is finally won to David. In this 
comedy at least Jones's liberal plan of construction, 
covering years of time and a continent in space, is 
justified. The play is a revelation both of a society and 
a man, a society whose standards have collapsed under 
frivolous ideas, a man who has built up a wall of chaffing 
around his own quiet. All the characters are true; 
they are like detail shadows playing at money-making, 
love, and politics. The engagement between Monty 
and Lady Clarice is a masterpiece of observation of two 
unloving but keen people. Aside from the end of the 
play, which does not sustain its promise, this is one of 
the best modern English comedies. 

The Case of Rebellious Sitsan (1894) treats in a comic 
spirit situations which would appear more dangerous 
if found in a French play. As here practiced Jones's 
doctrine of appearances operates against absolute 
honesty in the play. He enunciates the theory, "As 
woman cannot retaliate openly, let her retaliate secretly 
— and lie." But the force that denies her the right to 
retaliate openly in life denies it in a play, so Jones never 
tells us how far Susan has gone. We know only that 
the hero is another of his gallery of "strong, silent" 
men, that among the characters appear Pylus and 
Elain Shrimpton, both caricatures, and that the com- 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 105 

plaisant and helpful baronet appears again in Sir 
Richard. 

The vigorous note of The Masqueraders is found 
again in The Liars (1897). Less effective than The 
Masqueraders in that the play starts with a social 
group, interest is gradually centered in a very common- 
place intrigue. Falkner, the puritan Don Quixote, 
does not bear comparison with Remon. He is one of 
Jones's best prigs. But if Falkner does not win friends, 
the same cannot be said for Jessica. She is a perfectly 
observed specimen of the selfish woman who plays with 
her life and honor. Without power either of love or 
of sacrifice, she has the gift only of appearances and 
of untruth. Other excellent characters are those of 
the Nepean brothers. Strong, simple, tenacious, not 
clever, these brothers stand four-square to reality. The 
author's interest here lies behind the intrigue itself in 
the successive rings of society that are drawn into it 
by one lie. Before the end of the play is reached, a 
whole neighborhood has been honeycombed with false- 
hood. 

The Manoeuvres of Jane (1898) is a study of the 
character of a young woman. Here is a play that 
goes to the heart of many relationships between chil- 
dren and their parents, and young women and their 
lovers. There is in the young a compelling force that 
works their ends. As you deal with them, see that you 
placate that force. For it will make its own plans. 
This play is half farce, half intrigue play. Again, as 
in Michael and his Lost Angel, a compromising situation 
is secured through a boat excursion. 



106 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Mrs. Dane's Defence (1900) is Jones's best serious 
play because the most specific. In this play there is 
no burden of floating ideas. It is a close and orderly 
study of a concrete situation among men and women. 
The action is more economical than is usual in the 
Jones play, covering only three weeks. The play is 
the first utilization in the theatre of the tense atmos- 
phere of a courtroom at a time of cross-examination. 
There is no real struggle between characters. The 
struggle is one of wits, and interest is equally divided 
between speculation as to the outcome and interest in 
operations of contending minds. The story of the play 
had been told before in Wilkie Collins's The New 
Magdalen. It is that of a sinning woman who attempts 
in a new community to live down her errors. The play 
has several good characters. The helpful baronet 
here finds his best use in Sir Daniel, the kindly cross- 
examiner who uncovers the truth. 

Mrs. Dane's Defence was produced in 1900. Since 
that date Jones has written Whiteicashing Julia (1903) ; 
Joseph Entangled (1904) ; The Hypocrites (1906) ; 
Dolly Reforming Herself (1908) ; The Divine Gift (1913), 
and half a dozen other plays. Among these, Dolly 
Reforming Herself has the best comedy spirit. The 
Divine Gift is smoothly written but is dull. The truth 
is, Jones has not added to his reputation during the new 
century. Plenty of technical objections could always 
be raised to his work. The number of overseen em- 
braces in Jones's plays speaks ill for the discretion if 
not the manners of his characters. He has often 
obtruded his extra-artistic purpose. Sometimes he has 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 107 

lost his temper. But the fact remains that he has 
always been a way-breaker, a vigorous fighter for good 
things when these were hard to fight for. As a come- 
dian he has the strongest hand since the Restoration 
comedians and by no means the least subtle. As a 
valiant fighter for standards, he has been a specific for 
the stage. 



CHAPTER VII 
Arthur Wing Pinero 

In the theatrical history of the last thirty years the 
names of Jones and Pinero have always been associated. 
This has arisen from no similarity in their work; it 
has come from the complementary character of their 
genius. Where Jones is the outside worker in the 
theatre, Pinero is the inside worker. As time passes 
Jones's position may come to depend largely on the 
work he has done in the reform of the theatre as a social 
institution. The position of Pinero must always de- 
pend alone upon his work as a playwright. 

The era to which both these men belonged closed 
with the end of the century. Both represented in their 
work the first application of the new standards to the 
theatre. By necessity the work of each was a pioneer- 
ing work. For this reason both soon found themselves 
pressed upon by crowds of followers. Though both 
of them continued to write plays after 1900, their most 
significant work was done in the fifteen years that pre- 
cede the end of the century. 

Several qualities distinguish Pinero as the pioneer of 
new technical methods. The first of these is that he 

108 



ARTHXm WING PINERO 109 

is distinctly a dramatist of the theatre. He is an ex- 
pert whose first concern is in rendering more efficient 
the tools of his craft. He is continually experimenting 
on new formulas for widening the scope of his art. 
This absorption in craftsman matters gives him a little 
of the professional air. He has some of the heartless- 
ness of the specialist. He remembers always that he 
is writing for actors ; he is careful to put his plays into 
form ready for their use. One of his best characteristics 
is his possession of a technical conscience. He has 
never willingly produced shoddy or incomplete work. 
A second characteristic of Pinero is that he creates 
men and women excellently, but thoughts only in- 
differently. This explains his failure when he starts 
his play with an idea, and his invariable success when 
he starts with a group of people. He lacks w4iat Fyfe 
calls "an ingrained habit of mind" or "steadfast 
persistency of vision." And Pinero's third most 
noticeable trait is a tendency to apply to the theatre 
the standards of literature. As naturalism was re- 
fined, it tended to take upon itself a literary standard, 
the standard of the steady surface of writing instead of 
the broken surface of action. Pinero shows this not 
only in the style of his dialogue, which is often too well 
turned for speech. He shows it in an identification 
of all of his symbols with the symbols of the page of 
print. No first-rate dramatist of the time uses so 
little the extra-literary appeals of setting, action, and 
unvoiced mood. These things being said, one needs 
to add that from the start Pinero has represented the 
best traditions of the stage. He came into the theatre 



110 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

under the influence of Irving and the Bancrofts. His 
career has been one of successive adaptations of the 
work of the artist to the best demands of the time. 

Arthur Wing Pinero, the son of a lawyer and grand- 
son of a teller of the Exchequer, was himself destined 
for the law but went on the stage at nineteen with 
Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Wyndham in Edinburgh. This 
engagement was followed by one at Liverpool, and in 
1876 he joined Irving's Lyceum Company, playing 
utility parts. After five years with Irving, he joined 
Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft at the Haymarket Theatre in 
the season of 1881-1882. He did not distinguish him- 
self as an actor in either company, but Mr. Bancroft 
tells that he gave a remarkably good performance of 
Diggory in Goldsmith 's She Stoops to Conquer. Pinero 
left the Bancroft company in 1882 to devote himself 
to writing. After the production of £,200 a Year (1877) 
at the Globe, his employer Irving gave him £ 50 for a 
little curtain raiser, Daisy's Escape (1879). Irving 
also played his Bygones and Hester's Mystery. All of 
these were serious plays. Pinero's first important 
play was The Money Spinner, presented at the St. 
James's Theatre, January 8, 1881, by Mr. Hare and 
the Kendals, and played in two acts on account of the 
daring nature of the scene in the gambling saloon in 
the first act. His next play. The Squire, was brought 
out by the same producers December 29 of the same 
year. Pinero gained critical approval immediately. 
In 1886 Archer hailed him as the most original and 
remarkable of living English playwrights, with the 
possible exception of Gilbert. 



ARTHUR WING PI NERO 111 

Like many others of his time, Pinero's prentice work 
was done in adaptation. There had been some charge 
that for The Squire he was indebted to Thomas Hardy's 
novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. In the face of 
the author's denial and his offering of his notebooks, 
the charge fell to the ground, but thereafter Pinero 
was very careful that no such question should arise. 
Lords and Commons, produced at the Haymarket 
Theatre, October 24, 1883, by Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, 
was an adaptation of the Swedish story Mannen af 
Bdrd och Qvinnan af Folket by Marie Sophie Schwartz. 
The story is that of a nobleman who repudiates a bride 
whom he discovers to be illegitimate. It utilizes the 
familiar device found in Kotzebue's The Stranger and 
thereafter in many other plays and tales of a person 
moving unknown in a circle to which he had formerly 
belonged. Other adaptations are The Ironmaster 
(1884) from George Ohnet's Le Maitre de Forges, 
already known in an unauthorized adaptation by Bu- 
chanan; and Mayfair (1885) from Sardou's Maison 
Neuve, a play of striking situations but quite unlike Pi- 
nero's usual style. Two other plays of the apprentice 
period are The Rector (1883) and Law Water (1884). 
In the first play the author undertakes to use the device 
of surprise. The audience is led through an action 
assailing the honor of a good woman, the wife of a 
rector, only to find at the end that the accusation is 
that of a madman. Low Water, though not a success, 
shows the author's demand for better things. There 
were no technical tricks. A betrayed woman fights 
her situation through with patience and in the end 



112 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

marries the man who had deserted her. On account 
of its theme, the play was called immoral. It was in 
fact moral beyond the code of the day. Pinero dis- 
avowed the play after its production, claiming that it 
had been produced against his protest and under con- 
ditions to obscure its meaning. To the year 1884 
belongs the play The Weaker Sex, which was not pro- 
duced until 1888. The play deals with an artificial 
theme, that of a mother and daughter in love with the 
same man. It is treated with dexterity and sympathy. 
For this play as well as for his later The Profligatey 
Pinero provided an alternative ending the better to 
comport with truth, and to satisfy the demands of his 
audiences. 

Pinero finally discovered himself in farce. Only in 
the seventies had farce developed from the one-act 
vaudeville of doors and closets into a three-act play 
based upon some observation of character. The in- 
fluence of Labiche and the German von Moser had 
introduced eccentricity into farce and even some ele- 
ment of manners and humors. One of the first three- 
act farces was The Great Divorce Case, produced by 
Alexander Henderson in 1877 at the Criterion. A 
famous naughty English farce which successfully 
affronted Mrs. Grundy was Pink Dominoes (1877). 
As modern English farce developed, we find it falling 
into the eccentric farce of Edward Terry and the polite 
farce of Charles Wyndham. And not the least im- 
portant stage in modern English farce is that stage 
which is represented by Pinero's Court Theatre series 
of farces of the eighties. 



ARTHUR WING PINERO 113 

As practiced by the best writers, farce is a highly 
conventionalized form. It carries a definite set of 
standards and has a certain representative value as 
a formalized commentary on men. Far from being a 
form of haphazard entertainment, farce demands a 
code of consistency beyond that of the "well-made" 
play. Pinero holds that farce shows us probable people 
doing possible things. This may be explained by say- 
ing that farce is the result of the application to the play 
of a convention of logic beyond the standards of every- 
day human practice. As a matter of fact, human 
nature is not logical, and personality varies according 
to our greater or lesser modification of the codes of 
logic in human affairs. As a rule the theatre deals 
only with those actions which lie outside of logic, or as 
we say, the "human" actions. But farce deals with 
the incongruity between logic and life. Farce holds 
people to the pursuit of the conclusions involved in 
their premises. The improbable things people do in 
farce are those logical things which in real life they 
would escape by throwing logic overboard. Being 
caught in a net of circumstances the real person would 
withdraw or explain. Not so the consistent character 
in farce. He pushes forward on his path until he has 
reached the human reduction to the absurd. 

Through his handling of farce, Pinero gained his 
command of the stage. In this he first began to handle 
real human nature. In The Rocket (1883), written for 
Edward Terry, we have the story of Chevalier Walkin- 
shaw, whose fortunes go up like a rocket when a young 
girl he passes off as his daughter becomes engaged to a 



114 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

wealthy suitor, and come down like a stick when she 
is shown to be the daughter of a comedy personage. 
In Independence and In Chancery (1884) we have two 
further farces of situation. The Court Theatre series 
of farces begins with The Magistrate and extends up 
to the time that the increased expertness of the author's 
observation influenced him to merge the art of farce 
into that of comedy, to exchange hard logic for the 
playful spirit of fantasy. The Magistrate (1885) is 
based upon the device of a woman's understatement of 
her age. This device is quite acceptable. And it is 
true enough that circumstances in the figure of a grow- 
ing son will come unceasingly to contest her statement. 
The Schoolmistress (1886) and Dandy Dick (1887) are 
based upon traits of character which are in themselves 
true and human, but as treated are carried to im- 
probable extremes. 

After Dandy Dick, Pinero introduces other elements 
into his farces which almost carry them over to other 
forms of drama. During this period he was writing 
Sweet Lavender and The Profligate, and the sentimental 
strains of the one and the moral passions of the other 
enter into his lighter forms. In The Hobby Horse (1886) 
he writes a play on the vagaries of false philanthropy 
that has some of the flavor of H. A. Jones's later The 
Crusaders. The horsey characters, though belonging 
to an old and popular type, are not unlike Jones's 
middle-class figures. Pinero had stepped out of farce 
into sentimental comedy. Likewise, though The Cab- 
inet Minister (1890) was called a farce, it varied from 
the earlier farces in that it was a whimsical treatment 



ARTHUR WING PINERO 115 

of a serious subject. Pinero was striking his roots 
more deeply into human nature. He was attempting 
to add to the cold logic of farce a warmer note of 
human commentary or emotion. This tendency is 
seen in his treatment some years later of the theme of 
The Amazons (1893), a play based upon a device that 
offers farcical possibilities. But with a deeper sym- 
pathy than he has shown before, Pinero loses interest 
in the farce possibilities of his theme in his tender 
searching out of the heart of a mother, and the budding 
womanhood of three charming girls. Circumstance 
here stands not only for the logic of events, but for 
the logic of a sweet and full human nature learning in 
due time its lessons of love and tenderness and discard- 
ing the well-made plans of the past. 

Much water has passed over the wheel since Polonius 
classified the plays of his youth as "tragedy, com- 
edy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pas- 
toral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical- 
pastoral." Though this classification was not exact, 
after three centuries we have not been able to make a 
classification that pleases all comers. The critic who 
attempts to classify plays falls into the same confusion 
as the critic who attempts to classify men and for the 
same reason. 

Under such circumstances the simplest division is 
the best. Such a classification throws plays into the 
two classes of serious drama and comedy. In serious 
plays some course of action is presumed to have a 
binding effect upon the fortunes of the characters, an 
effect they cannot escape on account of a fusing of 



116 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

external circumstance with internal character. In 
comedy this course of action is shown to have only a 
temporary effect. The relationship between the inter- 
nal and the external is flexible and subject to adjust- 
ment without pain. 

Now under naturalism comedy is likely to be better 
than the serious play. This is because it is demanded 
of every work of art that it be true not only to itself 
but to all relevant things. It is easier to make comedy 
representative than tragedy because comedy is less 
likely to involve outside associations. It is difficult to 
write a true serious play according to the conventions 
of naturalism for the reason that it is difficult to find a 
set of concrete facts that adjust themselves to abstract 
truth. While it is perfectly possible to show a set of 
conditions culminating in the death of the chief figure 
of a serious play, the work can have no significance 
unless these conditions are representative. In the case 
of a serious play we are bound to ask, "Is this true 
of things in general? Is this death, this downfall, 
representative in a large sense of the course of nature?" 
If it is not, the play becomes a piece of special pleading 
quite outside the domain of art. In the case of comedy, 
because it is more detached, because its action is tem- 
porary and subject to adjustment, it is not so diflScult 
to find a plot that bears the stamp of truth. For 
comedy we ask only "Are the facts as given true? 
Are they truthfully interpreted?" On this account, 
and because naturalism has not worked out as yet a 
code for the harmony of the concrete facts of a limited 
action and the universal truth of its conclusion, comedy 



ARTHUR WING PINERO 117 

is the better form outside of the tragedy of the Greeks 
and of Shakespeare. 

These considerations strike one with particular force 
in considering Pinero's work. He undertook comedy 
and serious plays at about the same time. He con- 
tinues to write both throughout his career. And yet in 
his handling of comedy he is far more a master than 
he is in the handling of serious plays. To the handling 
of comedy Pinero came with lessons learned. He had 
developed an observing eye ; he had learned the rules 
of objectivity ; he could built a structure remarkable 
for balance and economy. When we consider Pinero's 
comedies we find that he handled two distinct types 
of comedy and that he handled them with equal 
mastery. We have seen that Pinero received his early 
tuition in the company for which Robertson had 
evolved a highly specialized art form. Robertson was 
the chief modern representative of the school of senti- 
mental comedy. Pinero's attitude toward sentiment 
is of peculiar interest in that his comedies fall into two 
groups, in the one of which the action is dominated by 
the mellow motives of simple emotion, and in the other 
this emotion is denied and inverted. 

Of these two groups the sentimental came earlier, 
but it finds isolated expression as late as Letty (1903). 
Sentiment with Pinero, as with his master Robertson, 
was never the warm overflow of Dickens's feeling. It 
was rather the quaint sympathy and insight of 
Thackeray. Even in his farces The Hobby Horse and 
The Cabinet Minister, critics had discerned a serious and 
a lingering note. In other plays of the same period 



118 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the element of farce was either greatly reduced or 
excluded altogether. Appropriately enough, Pinero's 
first success outside of farce was secured in the pure 
sentimental genre for which he was indebted to Robert- 
son. In Siveet Lavender (1888) there are many traces 
of Society and Caste. It would seem that this play 
was almost consciously an exercise in an older form of 
playwriting. More than any other of Pinero's plays 
it was based upon a sentimental motive. And The 
Times (1891), though beginning as farce and ending as 
social satire, was in fact a sentimental comedy. The 
play reveals an ironic note of social commentary not 
unlike that of the comedies of Jones softened with a 
regard for the sentimental values of the action. Tre- 
lawney of the "Wells" (1898), written long after 
Pinero had taken a high place as the writer of serious 
plays, again returns to Robertson, to whom it must be 
considered a tribute. It too hangs upon a sentimental 
theme. The difference of social ranks shown in Caste 
and Society is seen here in the contrast between the 
care-free Bohemian life of the circuit-actors and the 
heavy atmosphere of the Gower Street household. But 
this is something more than mere sentimental comedy. 
It most demands respect in that it is a beautiful speci- 
men of a difficult form, the historical comedy. As a 
rule comedy demands a contemporaneous note. It is 
difficult to realize the issues of the action unless this is 
placed in the midst of the present. But Pinero achieves 
with remarkable precision the atmosphere of the crino- 
line days, and without any allusions to historical data 
brings before us a sentimental theme, the circumstances 



ARTHUR WING PINERO 119 

of which had been dead for a generation. The play 
is a loving picture of the life of actors in the days 
of the breaking up of the circuit. In the character of 
the young dramatist, Tom Wrench, Pinero gives clear 
expression to the ideals that were remaking the drama 
of England. Many years later, in writing Letty (1903), 
Pinero returned to the mood of Robertson in providing 
an atmosphere in which to place his affecting study of 
a woman's surrender to a forbidden love. 

But if Pinero owes allegiance to Robertson as one 
of his masters of comedy, he is influenced as well by 
the drier and more ironic wit of Gilbert. And the latter 
is the influence that seems to have adapted itself more 
nearly to his own outlook as an artist. Critics soon 
discovered in Pinero that same mauvais horde in the 
treatment of the sentiments of love that they had 
found in Gilbert. The emotions of comradeship, the 
human frailties and little virtues, the pride and long- 
ing and fears of parents he could treat with a ready 
pen. But the glow of young love he could never take 
seriously. This was no mere perversity. It was a 
quality of his delicacy of taste and his instinct for 
truth. It arose from his refusal to see life through 
other men's eyes and to see it in only one quality. He 
saw it in a combination of qualities. His plays are 
unusual for the sense of depth he secures in character. 
The immature figures of the Victorian love story have 
no place in his work. His characters are men and 
women of many planes of motive and action. 

Out of these characteristics there came two of Pinero's 
most exquisite forms of comedy. Fantasy arises from 



120 THE CONTEMPORAKY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the application to the harder outlines of comedy of the 
softer graces of poetic imagination. Fantasy is no 
less rigorous than comedy. There is in it nothing of 
the haphazard or the inconsequent. It subjects the 
actions of men to the playful treatment of fancy. Its 
purpose is the uncovering of the more remote spaces of 
human character. And the other type of comedy is 
what may be called sophisticated comedy, or what the 
French call comedie rosse. This form of comedy appeals 
particularly to an artificial society in which the normal 
emotions of men are concealed or inverted. The 
sophisticated comedy is one of hard surfaces. Of 
comedie rosse, Filon says in his little volume De Dumas 
h Rostand : " Comedie rosse is not that style in which 
the heroine plays the villain's role. The rosserie 
applies to all the characters. It consists in a lack 
of conscience, a kind of vicious ingenuity, the state of 
mind of people who have never had a sense of morality, 
who live always in mixed issues or in injustice as a 
fish lives in water. ... A reign of evil is established 
without apparent change in the familiar relationships 
of society, or in everyday language." As far as this 
type of comedy applies to England, it develops out 
of a dulling of the moral sense through selfishness or 
cupidity rather than through passion. 

Both of these forms of comedy are a result of a high 
development of the comic spirit. In Lady Bountiful 
(1891) and The Princess and the Butterfly (1897), 
Pinero wrote two beautiful plays of the fantastic order. 
In each case the theme is one that might have been 
attacked full-handed with satire or with sentiment — 



AKTHUR WING PINERO 121 

in the one case, humanitarian activities ; in the other, 
the illusion of growing old. The author's exquisite 
skill is shown in what he avoids as well as in what he 
embraces. In The Princess and the Butterfly the illu- 
sion that it is too late for love is not corrected by the 
more pathetic illusion that youth lasts always; the 
antidote is a genial recognition that there is a love for 
all ages, and the later may be no less dear than the 
earlier. 

But it is in sophisticated comedy that Pinero reaches 
the heights of his achievement. The marks of Pinero's 
sophisticated comedy are two : a delicacy and tact 
in treating the heartlessness of men; a hardness and 
taciturnity in dealing with their tenderer virtues. The 
unmoral young person had been introduced by Gilbert 
as a substitute for the sentimental young person. 
Sophisticated comedy was the result of the application 
of an unmoral method to the action of the play. Its 
attitude is that of the watcher, who withholds judg- 
ment on moral values. It is particularly effective for 
the telling of a daring story, the action of which takes 
place in some neutral region which would be obscured 
by an insistence - upon moral values. The theme of 
such a play is judged altogether as a revelation of men, 
and not for the philosophy it enunciates. In some 
such way The Gay Lord Quex (1899) is to be considered. 
It has its commentary value no doubt, but the con- 
sideration of this is likely to blind us to the artistry 
that made it a hard and brilliant fabric of tempered 
wits. The play is important not as showing a certain 
philosophy of life, as representing frivolity, but as 



122 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

showing how a set of trained intelligences, all developed 
selfishly and for the ends of their own pleasure, would 
act under a given set of circumstances. That the 
characters are true there is no doubt. That the story 
represents the author's view of life need not be be- 
lieved. The story as it is given to us is as much better 
than life in wit and the technique of living as it is 
lower than life in morals. We are no more called upon 
to applaud Quex's reform at the end than to reprehend 
his low standards at the beginning. The play exists 
in a zone of pure thought, and it is as a fabric of design 
that the work remains one of the most notable in the 
language. 

Pinero has written several comedies since The Gay 
Lord Quex, but the only one that compares with it is 
The Thunderbolt (1908). The moral fabric of this play 
is even harder than that of The Gay Lord Quex. By 
this play we are introduced into a group from which 
all moral principles had been expelled by avarice. The 
author calls this an Episode in the History of a Provincial 
Family. In construction it is one of the most closely 
woven of English comedies. It is written with hard 
restraint. The author attempts to throw no shadow 
beyond the little group of selfish men and women who 
have met to open the will of their deceased relative. 
No character is permitted to escape the author's re- 
vealing scrutiny. Only one of the characters is treated 
with any sympathy. All the others are assayed under 
his test as blatant, brutal, hypocritical, avaricious. 
The theme is worthy of a Balzac: the power of the 
idea of money to debase the souls of the men and women 



ARTHUR WING PINERO 123 

of a family. It is handled with Balzac's passion for 
reality, and with more than his ingenuity. The play 
had only a limited success upon the stage. The work 
is so concentrated, the characters are so real, the climax 
lies so much in the realm of sardonic imagination, as 
to elevate the play beyond the instrumentalities of 
the stage. 

Of Pinero's other comedies, A Wife vnthout a Smile 
(1904), Preserving Mr. Panmure (1911), The "Mind 
the Paint" Girl (1912), The Widow of Wasdale Head 
(1912), Play-goers (1913), it is sufficient to say that in 
one way or another each has provided the artist scope 
for the exercise of his lighter moods and for the dis- 
play of his skill. In them the author has used a small 
palette with dainty colors, there is little story, but 
much display of rarer moods and of personality. 

We have been so careful to reveal Pinero as a master 
technician that there will be some interest in inquiring 
how this man came to harness his art to the construction 
of the play of ideas. We shall find that when he comes 
to the play of ideas, he begins again his novitiate, and 
that in the treatment of the serious play he advanced 
not by the continued development of ideas but by the 
gradual subordination of ideas to action. 

Pinero's first two serious plays of his mature period, 
The Profligate (1889) and The Second Mrs. Tanqueray 
(1893), belong to the class of ill-digested ideas. The 
first sign of the irrelevance of the theses is seen in the 
fact that the ideas, such as they were, were but added 
to a plot which had existed for years without them. 
Nothing was more common in the nineteenth century 



124 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

than what one may call the "sin-coming-back" type 
of play. In the older play the sin usually came back 
in the form of an accusing victim or a child. Even 
the scheme that brought in an old intrigue to complicate 
a new love had been used as lately as Grundy's In 
Honour Bound from Scribe's Une Chaine. It is prob- 
able that Pinero was influenced to deal with a social 
topic through the vogue of problems in the drama of 
Germany, France, and Norway. He began his writing 
of serious plays on the doctrine of determinism with 
which George Eliot had begun the composition of 
novels thirty years before. He holds social morality 
to be subject to a scientific statement as simple and 
diagrammatic as Novalis's doctrine, "Character is 
fate." The idea that humanity is a homogeneous 
organism, that consequences cannot be lost, but may be 
traced through the mass, is a nice scheme mechanically. 
It serves the drama very well because it makes it easy 
to bolster up a particular circumstance by reference to 
organic law. The limitations of this code are that it 
too thoroughly limits the powers of the world to the 
known forces of humanity. It quite neglects any 
action by chance, by mysterious intervention, or by a 
spirit of events outside the ascertainable forces of men. 
It tries to make a tragedy of divine vengeance without 
any Divinity. More than this, in order to point its 
moral, it narrows the circle of action and reaction to a 
smaller compass in area and time than experience 
approves. Excellently as this system adapts itself 
to the construction of plots, there is no truth in such 
an episode beyond the limits of its own story. Neither 



ARTHUR WING PINERO 125 

Ghosts, Rosmersholm, The Profligate, nor The Second 
Mrs. Tanqueray is a modern tragedy. They are dis- 
tressing stories about unhappy people whose fates 
have httle apphcation to hfe in general. 

It is worthy of notice that as Pinero developed in the 
artistry of the serious play, he gave up any desire to 
throw a light on great moral causes and satisfied him- 
self with the study of a particular action. The Prof- 
ligate, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, and The Notorious 
Mrs. Ebbsmith are the only plays in which he sur- 
renders to an extra-artistic control. In The Benefit 
of the Doubt, in Iris, and in Mid-Channel he becomes 
again merely an observer and teller of tales. 

The Profligate was produced at the Garrick Theatre, 
April 24, 1889, with a notable cast : John Hare as 
Lord Dangars ; Forbes-Robertson as Dunstan Ren- 
shaw; Lewis Waller as Hugh Murray; Miss Kate 
Rorke as Leslie Brudenell; Miss Olga Nethersole as 
Janet Preece. The play was immediately recognized 
as a serious piece of dramatic writing. The author 
was evidently undertaking to establish in dramatic 
form the moral law, "What a man sows that shall he 
also reap." He states this law in the story of a young 
man, Dunstan Renshaw, who, having lived a profli- 
gate's life, is surprised on the eve of his wedding to a 
woman he dearly loves by the young woman he 
had wronged. In the productions of the play the 
author used two endings, the one involving the death of 
Renshaw by suicide, the other his forgiveness by his 
girl bride. The author intends that the second ending 
shall seem no less tragic than the first. At this time 



126 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the matter of the ending of a play was receiving much 
critical consideration. There had been so much arti- 
ficiality in bringing the curtain down happily that by 
many it was presumed that anything that ended un- 
happily was for this reason artistic. This conclusion 
by no means follows. The truth is that very few situa- 
tions in the present dispensation permit of the tragic 
ending either of death or despair. The dominant tone 
of philosophy and science is one of hope and rebuilding. 
Death comes only when one pits his strength against 
these spirits. Quite properly Iris ends unhappily be- 
cause Iris refuses to ally herself with the principles of 
normal and healthy life. As she refuses to swim against 
the current, she is drawn down with the current. But 
there was every disposition in Renshaw to swim. 
Before the author can arrive at either one of the dooms 
assigned, he has to answer in the affirmative two ques- 
tions: First, has Renshaw shown himself without 
redeeming quality? Second, is Leslie shown to be of 
a totally unforgiving nature ? The answer to the first 
is found in the love of the man for the woman and 
his sense of sin before her. The answer to the second 
is contained in the character of the girl. Striking 
testimony as to what Leslie would do is contained in 
the reaction of another pure young girl to the same 
situation. When Ellean in the next play is asked 
whether she can forgive Captain Ardale, she makes an 
answer that goes far to invalidate the thesis upon which 
the play itself is built. She will forgive him, because 
in spite of his fault, he has been a brave man, but 
even more because she loves him. The conclusion is 



ARTHUR WING PINERO 127 

forced upon us that whereas Pinero undertook to write 
a tragedy he failed to do so. 

FeeHng, perhaps, that he had in The Profligate failed 
to make his situation universally significant, the author 
makes careful efforts to do so in The Second Mrs. 
Tanqueray. In The Profligate the action of the play is 
set at a point at the end of the episode. The author 
had not permitted us to validate his conclusions by a 
study of the characters over a long period of time. 
In The Second Mrs. Tanqueray he explicitely states the 
problem at the beginning and suffers us to follow out 
its realization. The theme is complementary to that 
of The Profligate. It begins with the problem of this 
play as it would be at the time of the marriage of 
Leslie and Renshaw, though in the second play the 
guilt is transferred from the man to the woman. The 
theme is this : Can a marriage between a prostitute 
and a good man be made a success, granted that the 
husband knows the wife's past and is determined to 
help her to redeem it ? This question Pinero answers 
in the negative for the same reason he had so an- 
swered in the former play — because the past comes 
back. It is clear that his answer does not cover the 
situation. The answer does not lie in the inconvenient 
habit of the past to come back but in the character of 
the woman. This may be illustrated in the quite vulgar 
theme of Augier's Mariage d'Olympe. Here the ques- 
tion is : Can a man marry a courtesan without suffer- 
ing for it ? And the answer is, he cannot if she remain 
a courtesan. And this Olympe does quite simply. 
She is the same scheming ambitious prostitute after 



128 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

her marriage that she had been before, and her end 
comes expeditiously as^ the result of a train of cir- 
cumstances that have no general meaning beyond im- 
pressing the maxim, "Don't marry a light woman." 
Pinero adds a social and a moral value to the story 
and in so doing confuses its issues. In the first place 
Paula is not a courtesan. At any rate she does not 
remain so. She neither returns to her old ways nor 
does she convince us that she had been heart and soul 
in them at any time. It is clear that if a blow is to fall 
it must come not from her persistent viciousness but 
from her pathetic effort to clean off her spots. 

What will be the forces that will hinder her from 
cleaning off her spots? They will lie inside of her in 
her oiATi character ; and they will lie outside of her 
in society. As for herself, there is no lack of will to 
correct herself ; she has no leanings toward a relapse. 
And society offers but a slight problem. Her husband 
and Cayley are kindness itself. At the worst, county 
society is cold. There was nothing in the large forces 
either within her or without her to make a failure of 
the experiment. The first signs of failure come from 
the little things, — the perverted, sensitive, loving 
character of Paula herself, frustrate by her own in- 
ability to reach to the moral standards of those about 
her, the careless society that affronts her more by ignor- 
ing her than by snubs, and her inability to get the love 
of a cold young girl. It is the failure in these little 
things that brings about the end. It is not incon- 
ceivable that the very meanness of its tawdry failure 
might have brought Paula to the suicide that the author 



ABTHUR WING PINERO 129 

forces by sterner means. In showing this failure, 
Pinero used the best gifts of his psychology. Nothing 
can excel the sympathetic and incisive laboratory work 
he has done on the characters of Paula and Aubrey 
and Cayley. If it had ended with this, there could 
have been no caviling at the theme. The old lover 
was introduced in order to enforce the drama and 
not the thought. While it looked like a moral, it was 
in fact a theatric requirement. This return (not to 
speak of the antecedent fact) is so improbable as to 
lose validity. The theatric catastrophe arises not from 
society nor from herself but from unrepresentative 
accident. It illustrates Frederick Wedmore's words, 
"The radical defect of would-be-serious play-writing 
(is) the defect that at a critical moment there is some- 
times a ready, sometunes an unwilling, sacrifice of 
dramatic truth to mere theatrical need." The result 
is that while we are compelled to accept the outcome of 
the play, we cannot accept it for the reasons given or 
as having any meaning outside itself. 

"The limitations of Mrs. Tanqueray are really the 
limitations of the dramatic form", writes William 
Archer, and Filon was of the opinion that "the piece 
enlarges the province of the theatre." Though we 
cannot agree with the first, we must agree with the 
second as far as England is concerned. A new era in 
modern English drama dates from the performance of 
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. 

Pinero made one more attempt at the play of ideas 
in The Notorious Mrs. Ehhsmith (1895). If at any 
point in his career wisdom and discretion have left 



130 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Pinero, it was while planning this play. It was a 
period of abnormal interest in Ibsen. Pinero had 
discovered that he could write serious plays, that he 
could throw ideas on the table for the wise to wag 
their heads over, that it is possible for a story to carry 
deeply-concealed meanings. All these things are found 
in the next play. He has discovered that woman and 
sex are problems. The play is full of Ibsenisms vaguely 
transplanted, Mrs. Thome and her dead boy, Agnes 
and the Bible, Agnes the atheist, the power of sex over 
a man. The play was a failure, and Pinero did not 
repeat his venture in untried regions. 

But if The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith showed the play 
of ideas gone to seed, The Benefit of the Doubt shows 
Pinero 's serious art cleared of impeding theories. 
Among Pinero's works this play occupies the position 
that Mrs. Dane's Defence holds among Jones's works. 
Both plays are dramatist's plays. They represent the 
serious treatment of a social group for its own sake and 
for the power it generates, without sentimentality, or 
passion, or bitterness. In both plays intellect governs. 
Both are fabrics of fighting wits. Perhaps no more 
delightfully true group has been brought together 
than this handful of ordinary unheroic people, — the 
dull Fraser, his flighty wife Theo, the jealous Mrs. 
AUingham, the worldly-wise Mrs. Cloys, and Sir 
Fletcher Portwood, cocky and self-assertive. The 
nearest any of them come to heroism is when they act 
by the illusion of heroism. No one is the center of 
the play. The author plays his light over one and all, 
even down to the servants. There is no one problem. 



ARTHUR WING PINERO 131 

The Benefit of the Doubt represents the region of half- 
thinking, half-wiUing, resting on good-enough in 
which many people live. In exposition it gets away 
from the formal exposition of The Second Mrs. Tan- 
queray. The play had only a relative success on the 
stage. It was too cynical and sophisticated for ordi- 
nary interest. 

In Iris Pinero takes another step forward in tech- 
nique. It is to be noticed that as he perfects his 
medium, his powers of popular appeal decrease. Since 
1900 Pinero has been the dramatist of the discriminating 
few. Even those critics who refuse Pinero any credit 
are enthusiastic for Iris. Iris is a study of a weak 
woman. Recognizing that most plays are based upon 
the theory of the contest of wills, he evolves a play that 
demands no such clash. The play is in fact a chronicle 
of a woman's life. She is seen to drift from episode to 
episode without forethought or volition. In structure 
the play has more the sequence of a series of chapters 
of a novel than the architecture of a drama. It is 
supported by two conventional expedients : the first, 
the device by which at the outset Iris is bound by the 
will of her dead husband to remain single if she is to 
retain her fortune ; and the second, the arbitrary blow 
by which she loses her fortune. Here again the theatric 
requirement blows an unnecessarily loud blast for truth, 
but the use of these devices should not blind us to the 
force of the story. 

Of His House in Order it is unnecessary to say any- 
thing except that its name indicates the type of play 
to which it belongs. Mid-Channel (1909) is Pinero's 



132 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

last serious work. In this play he governed himself 
absolutely by standards of rigorous artistry. Though 
the play is presumed to carry no significance beyond 
its own borders, it stands beside Iris and The Thunder- 
bolt as expanding our vision of human nature. This 
play is what The Second Mrs. Tanqueray might have 
been if treated without theatricality^ — a patient study 
of petty events and annoyances taking on themselves 
great significance in the mind of a neurasthenic woman 
and leading her to suicide. Though one finds himself 
disposed to haggle over the details of Zoe Blundell's 
death, he has to recognize that no one of these brought 
it about. The author is careful to distribute these all 
about her. Though she knows that she must die^ it 
is to be doubted whether the woman herself knows 
where the train started. And after all, it all lies in her 
sick brain, a brain suffering from the malady of Mid- 
Channel. 

While Pinero has received the rewards of his works, 
it is doubtful whether our own times can estimate his 
position. Naturally there has been some disposition 
to depreciate his services as well as those of Henry 
Arthur Jones. That will not be the disposition of the 
future critic. It is more likely that Pinero will be 
hailed as one of the first masters of the technique of 
English comedy. He has shown command over more 
varieties of dramatic form than any other English 
dramatist. As in the case of Jones, most of Pinero's 
work was done before 1900. Even the noisy claims of 
his successors only throw into clearer light the record 
of his achievement. 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Busy Nineties 

In a fascinating volume entitled The Eighteen Nine- 
ties, Holbrook Jackson studies the "new movements" 
that appeared with the end of the century. These 
movements are usually not so much directed toward 
a particular thing as they are infusions of a new spirit. 
Their demand is not so much for a particular specific 
as for something new. "Not to be new is, in these 
days, nothing", wrote Traill. It was a volatile, change- 
able, anxious period. And as the age lacked a driving 
motive, it left for the following time the supplying of 
solutions and itself showed only the desire for change. 

This spirit of the nineties had developed some years 
before in the vision of a new social organization which 
was to be forced down upon men's crowded ways, 
correcting not only the circumstances of men's lives, 
but purifying the lives themselves. And measures 
were taken for the establishment of institutions which 
should accomplish these ends. Butler, in his The 
Way of All Flesh, tells of the monasteries which were 
to be the citadels of the new social principle. And 
then, as the broad social dreams proved illusory, 

133 



134 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

some men withdrew into the recesses of individuahsm 
and contrived an anodyne in the workings of the in- 
dividual soul. The Ruskins and the Morrises, the 
Hyndmans, the Toynbees were followed by the Wildes, 
the Beardsleys, and the Beerbohms. In the nineties 
the voices of the social reformers mingle with the 
voices of the individualists in a quaint disconcert of 
destiny and disillusion. 

In this general movement the drama now began to 
take its place. It had been drawn into the social arena 
through the emphasis of its social connections by 
Matthew Arnold, H. A. Jones, William Archer, and 
others. The end of the century produced a new 
social program for the theatre. Now began public 
discussions of the obligation of the State to make the 
drama a fitting servant of the people, the obligation of 
the people to use the theatre for their own upbuilding. 
Censorship, national theatres, social dramatic thera- 
peutics were much written about. Criticism arose 
to new power. Newspapers opened their columns to 
the discussion of dramas. Plays were thinly disguised 
tracts. The drama was being evangelized. More 
than one writer promised that the theatre should usurp 
the place of the church. 

And along with these broad social appeals, by which 
works of the theatre were advertised in the market 
like so much merchandise, there came signs of another^ 
disposition among the dramatists tliemselves, a dis- 
position that was to render futile the nice visions of a 
great national theatre ruled over by an art-enfran- 
chised people. This disposition arose from the neces- 



THE BUSY NINETIES 135 

sities of the dramatist's craft, which, continually re- 
fining itself, making itself more exact, came to demand 
a smaller stage for action, a more genuine cooperation 
of the arts in the theatre, a keener and more dis- 
criminating audience. This demand came from the 
art of the theatre rather than from the blue prints 
and specifications of the social idealists. It was 
based upon a no less sincere belief in the new age that 
was at hand, but it saw the signs of this age in more 
hidden places. And, because much nonsense had 
been spoken by heated advocates of the "millennium 
around the corner", it saw the new events with some 
quaint humor, and it protected their revelation under 
an affectation of the grotesque and the inscrutable. 
Bernard Shaw, Chesterton, Barker, Synge are born of 
the generation of the nineties coming to flower in the 
free air of the new century. Only William Sharp, 
Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, expire before the new 
century. 

"A great creative period is at hand; probably a 
great dramatic epoch. But what will for one thing 
differentiate it from any predecessor is the new com- 
plexity, the new subtlety, in apprehension, in forma- 
tive conception, in imaginative rendering." In these 
words by William Sharp we have the first hint of the 
new structure, and the new ideals of staging which in 
the hands of Yeats and Craig and Barker and their 
fellows across the channel in Germany, Belgium, and 
Russia, were to claim the stage after the dominion of 
social causes. Meanwhile the old conception of the 
theatre as a thing of tricks and artifices began to give 



136 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

way to the idea that the theatre might be respected 
as a fountain of ideas. Zola began to be known for 
his ideas as well as for his scandals. Tolstoi was read 
and acted. Echegaray's El Gran Galeoto had been 
done in adaptation under the title of Calwnny as early 
as 1889. This influence from across the Channel was 
something quite other than that of the " Sardoudledom " 
of a few years before. It was causing men to think. 
It was taking the theatre into their homes, a place in 
which it was to show some disposition to rest, to the 
discomfiture of managers. It was hanging upon the 
stage a burden of causes. But at the same time it was 
introducing the stage into highly intelligent circles. 

But the voices of the new artists and thinkers were 
not the first to be heard in the busy nineties. The older 
lusty generation of declaimers and entertainers and 
shockers did not pass away in silence. They were 
driven into the noisy limbo "below the culture line" 
to the theatres on the outskirts of respectability, the 
Drury Lanes of lost tradition. The too much argu- 
ment of critics, the incubus of an ill-digested Ibsen, the 
drove of plays, like fishes in schools, coming along to 
give an impromptu philosophy of life, to attack the 
world-old problems of humanity with the little weapons 
of new-found social doctrine, the mock thinking, the 
lyric prose tragedy of discontent, of revolution based 
on ennui, of moral law derived from the instant whim 
of the weak — all these made much din in these days of 
change. Many attempts were made to force the old 
theatre to the demands of the new age before the 
next decade was to find that what was required was a 



THE BUSY NINETIES 137 

new organization quite free from the trammels of the 
past. 

First, the older managers passed away. Irving re- 
mained aloof on his pedestal until his death in 1905. 
The Bancrofts, the creators of a new order in the 
theatre, had retired as far back as 1885. The Kendals 
gave an increasing amount of time to the provinces, 
until they too retired. Augustus Harris and Wilson 
Barrett died. The vogue of the Savoy opera hardly 
outlived the eighties. Then came the newer generation 
of actor managers: Tree at His Majesty's; Harrison 
and Maude at the Haymarket; Wyndham at the 
Criterion and Wyndham's Theatre ; Robertson at the 
Comedy. 

Among authors Henry Herman, W. G. Wills, G. R. 
Sims, Robert Buchanan, — the hope of the drama in 
the eighties, — died or were relegated to minor places. 
Pinero and Jones stand out as the chief figures of the 
decade. Around them grew up other dramatists to 
ape their ways. Sydney Grundy claims to be some- 
thing of a contributor to ideas, and in his Sowing the 
Wind (1893) provides a nine days' sensation in a year 
of sensations. Outside the group of the dramatists of 
ideas Oscar Wilde, at the beginning of the decade, 
and Stephen Phillips at the end rise to popularity and 
sink, the one to obloquy, the other to forgetfulness. 

All this interest and discussion encouraged managers 
to try their hands at new things. In 1890 Mr. Tree 
began to set aside one night a week for the production 
of plays "calculated to delight and charm the few" 
but ill suited to the grosser tastes of vast audiences. 



138 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

This was the first sign of a disposition to adapt the 
professional stage to the new movements in play writing, 
and pointed the way to a more flexible organization 
of the stage. The first "Monday night" was given to 
the production of Stevenson and Henley's Beau 
Austin. After this Mr. Tree produced Maeterlinck's 
The Intruder. Neither of these plays secured critical 
approval. In 1891 John T. Grein established his 
Independent Theatre, bringing to England plays of 
Ibsen, Tolstoi, and Maeterlinck and, among native 
playwrights, giving early encouragement to George 
Moore and G. B. Shaw. 

In 1891 the American Copyright Bill was passed. 
By this Bill equal protection was afforded to the 
printed play in America and in England. This meas- 
ure was immediately followed by a great increase in 
printed plays. Following the lead of Gilbert, Pinero 
and Jones began to print their plays. Their ex- 
ample w^as followed by Grundy and Wilde and 
Phillips. The custom of printing plays made possible 
the growth of the greatest reputation of the period, 
that of George Bernard Shaw. The two foundation 
stones upon which rest the drama of the early twentieth 
century are the experimental theatre and the printed' 
play. 

Ibsen, who before had been only a name, now comes 
fully into the life of England. His message is spread 
on the stage and through criticisms and translations. 
Charles Charrington and Janet Achurch played A 
Doll's House, June 7, 1889, following this the next 
year with Pillars of Society. The company was then 



THE BUSY NINETIES 139 

taken around the world, and the gospel of Ibsen was 
spread in Australia, New Zealand, India, and Egypt. 
Ibsen's real vogue began in 1891, at which time A 
Doll's House was repeated by this company. On 
February 20, 1891, Mr. Herbert Waring and Miss 
Elizabeth Robins presented The Master Builder at 
the Trafalgar Square Theatre. Three days later 
Miss Florence Farr played Rosmersholm. The now 
famous Independent Theatre production of Ghosts 
occurred March 13, 1891. And on April 20, two young 
American women, Miss Elizabeth Robins and Miss 
Marion Lea, gave Hedda Gahler. By 1893 there had 
been added to this list by various producers The Lady 
from the Sea, the fourth act of Brand, and An Enemy 
of the People. 

Interest in Ibsen was spread largely by means of 
the printed play. Archer reported that within a year 
after the publication of the play Hedda Gabler was 
known as well as Becky Sharp. The uniform edition 
of the prose dramas was published in 1891 under the 
editorship of William Archer. Two years later (1893) 
Archer reports that of the four plays in the Camelot 
Series, Pillars of Society, A Doll's House, Ghosts, and 
An Enemy of the People, 14,367 copies had been sold 
in 1892. Of the uniform edition 16,834 copies had 
sold in two years. In all he estimates that forty 
thousand volumes had been sold, and that seven 
plays had been successfully produced. The Ibsen 
vogue was significant in England in two directions. 
It started the current of thought toward the theatre ; 
it established the custom of printing and reading plays. 



140 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

The position of Ibsen in England of this period should 
not be misunderstood. Strictly speaking, Ibsen never 
was popular in England. The number of plays written 
on his model has been very small, and these have 
been for the most part either immediate or eventual 
failures. They were either killed immediately by 
their ugliness of outline, or they were killed finally 
by the fact that their mental construction would not 
stand the test of study. But Ibsen's indirect influ- 
ence was more thorough. Those who imitated him 
did it badly. Those who came under the stimulus 
of his spirit could not fail to be made more honest in 
thought, less artificial in workmanship than before. 
After 1890, English plays can be pretty clearly divided 
into those which have felt the impress of the Ibsen 
spirit and those which have not. And the presump- 
tion is usually against the latter class. It was not that 
plays had to be Ibsenic in form and philosophy, but 
that they had to be purified in the air that he had shot 
clear. The influence of Ibsen on his blind imitators 
has been unfortunate. From some dramatists he 
seemed to take away the joy in work as well as the joy 
in life. Their plays became labored, tepid, stilted, 
and reeked of a half-baked misanthropy. This motive 
represented the worst aspect of his influence. The 
best aspect was represented by his heroic testing of 
formulas and renovation of values. 

Naturally a new spirit could not be introduced into 
English drama without objection. There had been 
rumblings of critical disapproval for ten years, ever 
since Jones had thrown Saints and Sinners as a 



THE BUSY NINETIES 141 

bombshell into the camp of English respectability. It 
had been increased by the controversies over Grundy 
at the end of the eighties, and in 1893 and 1894 it 
burst like a fury over the new plays of Jones and 
Pinero and the productions of the Ibsenites. The 
champion of the older order of critics was Clement 
Scott, the dean of English critics, long the editor of 
The Theatre and in the early nineties dramatic critic 
of Truth. He had as aids such men as Robert Bu- 
chanan, of "fleshly school of poetry" fame, and many 
ecclesiastics. The leader of the other side was Wil- 
liam Archer. The difference between the methods of 
the two men was marked. Scott was vituperative. 
Archer was calm always. Scott indulged in person- 
alities; Archer held to the critical point. It looked 
then as if Scott were defending the standard, the con- 
servative taste, the abiding values, and as if Archer 
were defending the violation of standard, the collapse 
of taste. Archer defended Jones for appealing to the 
public in advertisements. Scott held that this was 
beneath the dignity of an artist. Archer found some- 
thing to hope for even in melodrama. To Scott this 
form was the violation of all art. Archer believed 
Grundy was one of the first of England's playwrights 
and supported the new morality of fearless public 
discussion. Scott would give Grundy no such place. 
Nor could he see how a man who " dared to be moral " 
could soil his fingers with Zola and Sardou, with 
Hal§vy and Dumas fils. In the year that Becque was 
suing Sarcey for flaying his play, La Parisienne, the 
climax of English critical virulence came. After the 



142 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

performance of Ghosts at the Independent Theatre, 
Scott compared the play in The Daily Telegraph with 
an open drain, a loathsome sore unbandaged, and 
censured "the gross and almost putrid indecorum of 
the play." He followed this with an anonymous 
attack in Truth excelling in spite anything lately seen 
in English criticism. Then, sick at heart at the vul- 
garity of the stage to which he had given his life, he 
took a trip around the world and returned home to 
die. In a Schimpflexikon printed in the Pall Mall 
Gazette under the title of Ghosts and Gibberings, and in 
an article in the Fortnightly Review for 1893, The 
Mausoleum of Ibsen, Archer prints a list of the epithets 
that had been applied to Ibsen's plays by British 
journalists. Among these are "abominable, disgust- 
ing, bestial, fetid, loathsome, putrid, crapulous, offen- 
sive, scandalous, repulsive, revolting, blasphemous, 
abhorrent, degrading, unwholesome, sordid, foul, 
filthy, malodorous, noisome." Ibsen is called an 
egotist, a bungler, a suburban, a provincial. The con- 
troversy raged again in November, 1894, in The Times, 
around the head of Jones. It culminated in a general 
condemnation of stage plays by the Bishops, Cardinal, 
and Pillars of London. 

Amid such events the censorship stood out more 
prominently than ever before. Then in fact the censor- 
ship began to take a prominent place in stage con- 
troversy. When immorality was only that of innu- 
endo, and was addressed to the sensibilities rather 
than to the intelligence, the censor was seldom able 
to devise means for reaching it. But when immorality 



THE BUSY NINETIES 143 

came into the theme, he had something he could deal 
with. He had held up Camille for a long time, until 
the success of the company of the Comedie Fran^aise 
in 1879 had given Dumas respectability. He had 
held up Frou Frou. Meanwhile he had licensed one 
of the naughtiest of French farces, Pink Dominoes. 
Up to the early nineties, plays had been censored 
for occasional oaths or for offenses against classes of 
people or friendly powers. Now the chief ground of 
censorship came to be a play's treatment of matters 
of sex. As a rule, the more dignified the treatment, 
the more likely the play was to be censored. 

This situation developed to its height during the 
nineties. The topics of the realistic plays were no 
more disagreeable than had been those of the older 
plays. They were merely treated unsentimentally. 
It wasn't the subject-matter of the new drama that 
was objected to, but its denial of romantic illusions. 
Archer writes of the censorship : " From this came the 
double entendre, the between-the-lines meaning. When 
Mr. Burnand introduces us to a variety actress or a 
female acrobat, we all know what was the lady's pro- 
fession in the original French; and that elastic and 
convenient term 'flirtation' covers a multitude of sins, 
but covers them in a very gauzy fashion." And 
Percy Fitzgerald speaks of the fashionable "disinfect- 
ing process" by means of which there is evolved the 
type of "innocent-guilty" plays. 

The importance of these things lies in the fact that 
through an external control either by the government 
or the people the author is not permitted to be true 



144 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

to his own theme. He is compelled to stultify his art 
at the source. Now the true dramatist demands for 
his art only what Maupassant calls "the right to pre- 
sent truth as he sees it, according to his individual im- 
pression of reality." Hardy asks that a novel be con- 
sidered an impression, not an argument, and he quotes 
Goethe : " As soon as I observe that any one, when 
judging of poetical representations, considers any- 
thing more important than the inner necessity and 
truth, I have done with him." These demands hold 
good for the dramatist. He asks only the right to 
presents his individual impression of life. 

The fact that the great public acting arbitrarily 
through its organs of expression or officially through 
its government will not permit this freedom has re- 
sulted in one of the most important movements of 
recent years. This movement had its inception in 
the nineties, found its expression in organization in the 
first decade of the next century, and began immedi- 
ately to flower into new playwrights and plays. It 
represented the separation of the smaller from the 
larger audience, the isolation of the few who demand 
a high standard from the many who are satisfied with 
a standard of the good enough. It provided edifices 
in which these few may be protected in their private 
rights and in which the artist may be protected in his 
sesthetic imperatives. There was nothing snobbish 
in this movement. It rested upon the selective basis 
of taste and understanding. It began in England as 
an attempt to avoid the necessities of ticket selling, 
which is the handle the Lord Chamberlain holds to 



THE BUSY NINETIES 145 

the commercial theatre. As it proceeded, it tended 
to form groups about common interests. In this way- 
it accompanied the narrowing of themes to an intimate 
and incisive standard. The development of the new 
theatrical organization upon the unit of the smaller 
as distinguished from the great audience will be treated 
in the next chapter. 

Much of the spirit of the nineties was one of en- 
thusiasm and promise. But there was the reverse of 
this shield. For several years, from 1891 to 1895, the 
"dramatic renascence" was hailed. And, as in the 
case of socialism, men began to think of it in terms of 
the next step. But these enthusiasts failed to take 
account of the slow moving of forces. The tempest 
about Ibsen died down. Then failures began. Jones's 
Michael and his Lost Angel lived ten days. H. V. Es- 
mond's The Divided Way and Grundy's The Greatest 
of These were badly received. These failures were 
partly the result of the turning of the tide against plays 
which had been supported in a spasm of enthusiasm. 
They came partly because the dramatists were over- 
playing the lead. And in large measure they came 
because the new movements had taught the audience 
and critics an intolerance of judgment. As an ironic 
result of a movement for reform, the critics, having 
sharpened their weapons, used them with ferocity on 
good and bad alike. 

In spite of the interest in the stage, the legitimate 
theatre business became a very precarious thing in- 
deed. Managers found it more and more dangerous 
to experiment. This was not altogether because of 



146 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the opposition of cheap standards but because high- 
class audiences and critics could not be depended 
upon. With the g^o^vth of interest there had come 
the breaking-up into camps, the bickerings and back- 
firings of new and old movements, new and old critics, 
the foreign and the native play. As dramatists tried 
their wings, managers retired. Then with a sweep the 
new craze for entertainment began. All the force 
that had been used to recreate the place of the drama in 
society was now turned to making the fortunes of such 
plays as Under the Red Robe, The Sign of the Cross, 
Trilby, The Prisoner of Zenda. Gloom fell in the camps 
of reform. IVIen thought that the end of the world 
had come. They did not recognize that it was but the 
breaking-up of the old groupings preparatory to a 
new organization. 

The " Eighteen-nineties " were anxiously listening 
for new voices. They were willing to give a hearing 
to anything that seemed to promise a fresh note. For 
this reason the table was spread with some wares that 
before might not have been offered. A few years be- 
fore the nineties the ill-starred pen of John Davidson 
had brought forth a series of dramas not appropriate 
for the stage but of a rare and absolute genius, — Bruce, 
A Drama (1886), Smith, A Tragic Farce (1888), Scara- 
mouch in Naxos (1889). To the latter had been set a 
prologue on pantomime that promises some of the 
later positions of Maeterlinck and Gordon Craig. 
And William Sharp in Vistas (1894) wTote a series of 
short plays of quite remarkable originality. 

It was characteristic of Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) 



THE BUSY NINETIES 147 

that after spending his Hfe on other kinds of writing, 
he turned in his last five years of work to success on 
the stage. His plays were thought to represent a high 
mark in English drama. We now know that they de- 
serve no such position. They are the work of a skilled 
craftsman in writing. They came at a juncture in 
English affairs when their qualities would be accepted. 
Beside the more sincere work of other men they de- 
serve the more critical regard they have lately received. 

Wilde possessed the gift that was most in demand 
for the theatre of the nineties. He had style. He 
could take easy attitudes on other men's thoughts. 
This ability for taking attitudes gave him credit for 
knowing the world. It was particularly useful as a 
theatrical gift. But Wilde's theatrical gift is a super- 
ficial one. Of the theatre as an art of life he knew 
nothing. He was interested in the theatre only as an 
art apart from life. Neither in structure, substance, 
character, grouping, or epigram did Wilde add a jot 
to our knowledge of men by his plays. And his plots 
were of a variety that no other man in England would 
have dared to construct. 

What then made Wilde's popularity? It was his 
"tact" for discovering the passing mood of the time 
and expressing it gracefully. No writer who has 
written in English has floated upon his age as has 
Wilde. He carried the art of superficiality up to 
genius. He was nothing apart from his time, and 
when his time repudiated him he had no life left. 
His repute for the daring and original came from his 
ability to surprise men at themselves. His plays are 



148 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the work of a quick and brilliant talker who anticipates 
the ideas of his fellows and gives them back adorned 
with crisp words. His faculty of epigram he applied 
to a series of plots of the most astounding triteness. 
It hardly seems possible that a man of Wilde's wit 
could have accepted the plots that he uses in his first 
three plays. They are melodramatic in idea, they 
teem with hackneyed situations; they are banal in 
their appeal to a purely theatrical sympathy. The 
characters are almost totally undifferentiated. 

The models of his structures are found in the French 
plays of intrigue, the plays of hidden paternities, of 
midnight visits in gentlemen's chambers, of generous 
shielding of the guilty one by sister or friend. After 
the fashion of the French play, the action of three 
of them, of Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No 
Importance, and An Ideal Husband, takes place within 
twenty-four hours. Wilde managed to do what Grundy 
had been unable to do, to transfer the French technique 
to the stage of an English theatre. The justification 
of his wit is the same as that of the French turned 
phrase. The characters live in a thoroughly artificial 
society. They talk the language of that society, a 
language of badinage and quips and apothegms. It 
matters not that in so doing they all speak alike. 
Within the limits of an artificial society Wilde has 
managed to differentiate a few men. He has created 
no woman worthy of passing respect as a creation. 
His heroines do not even live within their class; and 
his dowagers, Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Blacknell, the 
Duchess of Berwick, are used for his didactic talk. 



THE BUSY NINETIES 149 

After The Duchess of Padua, a historical melodrama 
of the sixteenth century, and Vera, or the Nihilists, a 
Russian melodrama, neither of which was produced 
in England, Wilde wrote Lady Windermere's Fan. It 
was produced by George Alexander at the St. James's 
Theatre, February 22, 1892. The situation of this is 
a palliation of the French triangle play. As at first 
presented the author tried to conceal from the audience 
the identity of Mrs. £rlynne until the final act. This 
he changed after a few nights. His next play was A 
Woman of No Importance, presented at the Haymarket 
Theatre by Beerbohm Tree, April 19, 1893. Again 
we have a purely artificial situation play, with the 
past rising up, the son of shame, the parents' struggle. 
Again there is surprise at the disclosure of a fact of which 
the audience had been aware. An Ideal Husband, 
presented by Lewis Waller at the Haymarket, January 
3, 1895, is a story of political and business intrigue, 
with sale of cabinet secrets and swords of retribution 
poised. There is the dangerous woman and the dull 
good woman and much moralizing palaver. In The 
Importance of Being Earnest, presented at the St. 
James's by George Alexander, February 14, 1895, 
Wilde threw away his melodramatic themes. The 
structure is for the first time flexible, and the epigrams 
are justified. Wilde calls this "a trivial comedy for 
serious people." It is successful because it is thor- 
oughly detached from all meaning and models. Wilde 
had discovered in the graceful foolery of farce the form 
best adapted to the expression of his genius on the stage. 
Here for the first time the language and the form suited 



150 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the theme and the substance. It is a pure farce of 
quick wits and refined intelligences, showing how high 
this form might go if its motives were made more 
to inhere in the subtleties of the mind. Perhaps be- 
cause it was so playful and adept it was Wilde's best 
commentary on frivolous society. This play suggests 
what the English theatre may have lost by the pre- 
mature closing of the career of the playwright. The 
list of Wilde's plays is completed with Salome, written 
by Wilde first in French and accepted for production 
by Sarah Bernhardt. This is one of the first plays in 
Europe of the Oriental sensuous school. For its source, 
outside of Maeterlinck, one has to look to the works 
of the French decadents and of the Aubrey Beardsley 
group of English artists. 

The influence of Wilde was considerable. Not 
many could copy his brilliance and wit, but all could 
copy his copy. There grew up in the nineties a little 
school of comedy of manners, dextrously plotted, well- 
tilled little gardens. The trick of "surface manners" 
and good taste had been learned. Therefore there 
was nothing else to do but write delicately about de- 
nied topics. It must be said that none of the comedians 
of manners had quite the artificiality of Wilde. They 
made up what they lacked in brilliance by a sincerity 
of interest in social manners, sometimes by a manly 
note of scorn. But as a whole, these plays are like 
the crackling of reeds in a pot. Haddon Chambers 
(1860) brought from New South Wales a little note of 
the Empire into English drama. In Captain Swift 
(1888) he introduces a gentleman thief adventurer 



THE BUSY NINETIES 151 

from the "bush" of an order that was much to be used 
later. His best play is The Tyranny of Tears (1899), 
persistently referred to as showing a Wilde influence. 
It is an adroit, expeditious study of feminine foibles, 
developed with only five characters and with no flag- 
ging of interest or break in the solid structure. Other 
plays are John a' Dreams (1894), Passers-by (1911), 
Tante (1913). H. V. Esmond (1869-) deserves to be 
remembered for the realism of his Grierson's Way, 
Sb tragedy in a Chelsea flat. Other plays of his of a 
lighter, more sentimental kind are When We Were 
Twenty-one (1901) and The Sentimentalists (1902). 
To the sentimental class belong the comedies of R. C. 
Carton (1856- ) The Home Secretary (1895), The Tree 
of Knowledge (1897), Lord and Lady Algy (1898). 
Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes, 1867-1906) at- 
tempted to transfer to the theatre her interest in tem- 
peraments in Journeys End in Lovers' Meeting (1894), 
written with George Moore, The Ambassador (1898), 
A Repentance (1899), The Wisdom of the Wise (1900), 
The Bishop's Move (1902). Cynical, knowing life so 
well that her knowledge crystallized into epigrams, 
she failed of command of the stage formula. F. 
Anstey in The Man from Blankleys shows a minute 
observation of the middle class ; Isaac Henderson in 
The Mummy and the Humming-bird writes an effective 
situation play. But comedy of manners failed to find 
the key to the age, and suddenly the writers of it are 
left high and dry. 

Stimulated perhaps by the demand for a literary 
drama, and encouraged by the success of Richepin and 



152 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Rostand in France, George Alexander in 1900 com- 
missioned Stephen Phillips to write him a tragedy in 
verse. Phillips (1868-1915) had made himself the 
most discussed poet in England by the publication in 
1898 of Poems, including Christ in Hades and The 
Woman with the Dead Soul. He had also had several 
years' experience as an actor with the company of his 
cousin, F. R. Benson, in whose company he had played 
lago, Prospero, and Ghost. One result of Alexander's 
commission was the publication in 1900 of Paolo and 
Francesca. In book form the play won an immense 
success. Before Paolo and Francesca was produced 
Beerbohm Tree had produced the poet's Herod (1900). 
Thereafter Tree produced Ulysses (1902), Nero (1906), 
and Faust (1908), written with J. Comyns Carr. 
Paolo and Francesca was produced by George Alex- 
ander (1901). Aylmer's Secret, The Sin of David, 
Pietro of Siena, and one or two other plays await pro- 
duction. Phillips was extravagantly hailed upon the 
publication of his first plays as "widening the realm 
of poetic imagination." Some said that a great poetic 
era had come in the theatre. Others accuse him of 
staying behind "singing to the dying." 

Whatever may be said of Phillips, he must be granted 
two qualities : a true lyrical imagination and a com- 
mand of the mechanics of the stage. But these did 
not make him a great dramatist. The two gifts seemed 
in fact to check each other. His most successful play 
was Paolo and Francesca, for in this his art was most 
flexible. In his other plays he undertook themes that 
cramped his lyrical gift. He was said to desire to go 



THE BUSY NINETIES 153 

back beyond the Elizabethan type of play to the stricter 
models of the classics. This choice of a medium was 
the poet's first error. It came perhaps from a too as- 
piring mind, a desire to join with the great poets of all 
time in the themes he treated. No English dramatist 
has succeeded in writing a practicable play by Greek 
models, and Phillips was not equipped to succeed where 
others had failed. 

Not even Paolo and Francesca, which had some of 
the traits of the Elizabethan play, was as successful on 
the stage as it had been in the book. In compensating 
for his strained design, Phillips depends largely upon 
elements of pageantry and verse. His plays came 
to be seen as workmanlike, but small, panoramas, rich 
with color, instinct with music and poetry, but cold 
to the touch. They did not have the passion of the 
Greek play or the scope of the romantic play. They 
were little pageants, groups of beautifully moving sur- 
faces of action. They were expressed in exquisite 
poetry, but the poetry was swamped by the action 
and the pageantry. Phillips made no attempt to deal 
with the mind of his own time. Only once did he come 
to modern England, and this, in The Sin of David, was 
to avoid the ban of the censor against the treatment of 
a Biblical theme. It is not probable that Phillips' 
plays will again be seen on the stage. But they w^ill 
be read for some time for the beauty of their verse and 
the warmth of their feeling. 



CHAPTER IX 

New Organization 

This chapter deals with the new systems of organiza- 
tion that in the first decade of the new century were 
introduced into England. The demand for a new 
organization arose out of a growth of a new audience 
and a new taste. It was encouraged by the influence 
of the dramatic movements on the Continent. It was 
made necessary by the increasing governmental and 
commercial handicaps under which the old organizations 
of the theatre worked. 

For some time it had been apparent to the best 
managers of professional companies that something 
would have to be done to bend the existing institution 
of the theatre towards the newer movements. Of these 
managers the man with the most discernment and 
courage was Beerbohm Tree. We have seen that as 
early as 1890 Tree had set aside Monday nights for the 
production of experimental pieces. Later he had given 
morning and afternoon performances for the same pur- 
pose. At his Afternoon Theatre he presented such 
plays as An Enemy of the People, Hannele, and Hansel 
and Gretel, with good music. Tree had been active in 

154 



NEW ORGANIZATION 155 

the organization of the Costume Society. In 1904 he 
founded the Academy of Dramatic Art for the instruction 
of actors and stage directors, costumers, and writers. 
In 1914 this academy had a large Council, with eighty- 
four distinguished members of the profession acting as 
associates. Since 1905 he has made it a custom to 
give each year an elaborate Shakespeare festival finely 
mounted. 

The matinee idea was practiced as a means of experi- 
ment on new plays. It was used also to avoid the 
annoyances of evening performances. In the nineties 
Archer and Oswald Crawfurd had suggested four o'clock 
matinees on the plea that the "man who has dined is 
the one great enemy of the intellectual drama" ; and 
"Max" had written in the Saturday Review: "Before 
we can hope to raise drama to the level of other arts 
we must undermine by every means in our power the 
custom of regarding the theatre as a jolly place in which 
to digest food and sit in amity with our fellow creatures." 
With the thought of applying this theory to profes- 
sional productions, Pinero suggested earlier evening 
performances and later dinners. Matinee performances 
formed the first production of some of the most notable 
plays of the recent theatre, among them plays by 
Bernard Shaw and Galsworthy's Strife. 

The most significant efforts were those that were 
made by people within and without the theatre to create 
an auxiliary organization for a specialized appeal. For 
such an organization models had already been supplied 
by Paris and Berlin, in the establishment of the Theatre 
Libre in Paris in 1887 and the Freie Biihne in Berlin in 



156 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

1889. These theatres were known as free theatres. 
They were intended to be free from the control of the 
government and of the ancient traditions in playwriting 
and acting. Theatrical conditions are not the same 
in England as they are on the Continent. For this 
reason freedom means a different thing. In England 
the new workers desired to be free from the control of 
the censorship and of a hampering moral code. More 
than this, they wished to be free from the limitations 
of the commercial system. On their side they had no 
need to complain of the tyranny of traditions. They 
were more likely to ask to be permitted to make strict 
regulations of art. For these reasons the English free 
theatres were not bound to the naturalistic code as 
were those of the Continent. 

The call for an English free theatre had first been 
made by George Moore in his Impressions and Opinions 
(1891). The man who put this call into effect was 
John T. Grein, who in 1891 organized the Independent 
Theatre. Like Antoine of the Theatre Libre, Grein 
was a man of commerce with a vision. Of Dutch 
nativity, Consul General of the Congo, a critic, and a 
traveler, Grein made up his mind to introduce Euro- 
pean drama to England. In 1889 he began to edit a 
magazine for noticing French and Dutch pieces. His 
establishment of the Independent Theatre was not 
without portent. It found its first home in the little 
theatre in Tottenham Court Road with which Marie 
Wilton twenty-five years before had begun a new 
regime. And this theatre opened its doors with the 
same play with which French and German free theatres 



NEW ORGANIZATION 157 

had begun their careers. The production of Ghosts 
(March 1, 1891), under the direction of Mr. Cecil 
Raleigh, was a slap in the face of English theatrical 
complacency. There ensued the campaign of abuse 
which was mentioned in the last chapter, a campaign 
in which the intentions and the morals of those inter- 
ested in the performance were severely impugned. 
Though the monetary returns were small, the venture 
accomplished the designs of the founder. He secured 
a membership including such men and women as 
George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, A. W. Pinero, H. A. 
Jones, and Mrs. J. R. Green. Archer wrote for the 
movement in the Fortnightly Review, Moore in the Pall 
Mall Gazette; A. B. Walkley and G. B. Shaw soon joined 
the standard. But Grein tells us that the roll of the 
members never exceeded one hundred and seventy-five. 
He was often without money, supporting the productions 
out of his own means, meanwhile struggling against 
the censor, and sometimes even without a theatre. 
His management was farsighted and diplomatic. With 
none of the militant spirit of Antoine, he was able to 
make many friends for the new theatre. 

The second production of the Independent Theatre 
was Zola's Therese Raquin. Then followed three short 
plays, one by Arthur Symons, founded on a story by 
Frank Harris, Theodore de Banville's The Kiss, and 
George Brandes's A Visit. In 1892, in consequence of 
a dare made by G. R. Sims, there came George Moore's 
The Strike at Arlingford. The greatest contribution of 
the theatre was in opening the stage to Shaw in 1892 
for the production of Widowers' Houses. In 1894 The 



158 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Independent Theatre, Limited, was incorporated for 
the production of Dorothy Leighton's Thyrza Fleming. 
The following year (1895) brought the Paris company 
of Lugne-Poe for a week, playing The Master Builder, 
Rosmersholm, Pelleas et Melisande, L'Interieur and 
Ulntruse in French. Between productions, Grein 
went back to work as Antoine was doing. The Inde- 
pendent Theatre lasted seven years and produced 
twenty-six plays new and translated. 

Out of the ashes of the Independent Theatre came the 
Stage Society, incorporated in 1904. The fii'st meeting 
for the organization of this Society was called by Mr. 
Frederick Whelen, then employed by the Bank of Eng- 
land and later literary secretary to Sir H. Beerbohm 
Tree. The meeting was held in William Morris's old 
rooms in Red Lion Square. The Society was estab- 
lished on the basis of subscriptions and has been kept 
on this basis. The advantage of this system is that a 
definite income is provided whereby the element of 
speculation is eliminated, and the performances are 
technically private. As no money is accepted at the 
door, the censorship is avoided. The Society has paid 
its way from the first and has set aside a reserve fund. 
Two performances are given each play, one on Sunday 
night and one on Monday afternoon. The Society has 
attached itself to no theatre but has engaged theatres 
for particular performances, often playing at the Im- 
perial. It has presented plays regularly since 1899, the 
number of annual productions running between four 
and eight. The membership of the Society in 1914 was 
about twelve hundred. It is managed by a large council 



NEW ORGANIZATION 159 

which has numbered among its members at different 
times J. M, Barrie, Bernard Shaw, Gilbert Murray, 
Frederick Whelen, and A, E. Drinkwater . 

The record of the Stage Society is an impressive 
one. Its purpose Hes in the field of pioneering rather 
than in popularization, but as a feature of its work it 
is continually offering men and wares to the popular 
theatres. It has kept well ahead of the popular demand 
but it has never surrendered to an eccentric appeal. Its 
contributions to the English theatre have fallen into 
three classes, the contributions of new actors and pro- 
ducers, the introduction of significant foreign plays in 
translation, and the support of new English writers. 
Among workers its most important product has been 
Granville Barker, who graduated from the Stage 
Society into the management of repertory theatres. 
Many of the productions of the Stage Society represent 
the first English performance. The Stage Society 
started with Shaw's You Never Can Tell (1900). The 
same year was given Captain Brasshound's Conversion 
(1900). The list includes Ibsen's Pillars of Society, The 
Lady from the Sea, When We Dead Awaken, The League 
of Youth (1900) ; Eugene Brieux's Les Hannetons 
(1907); St. John Hankin's The Two Mr. Wetherbys 
(1903) ; The Cassilis Engagement (1907) ; Gorky's The 
Lower Depths (1903) ; Tolstoi's The Power of Darkness 
(1903); Maugham's A Man of Honour {1904) ; Gilbert 
Murray's Andromache (1901) ; Granville Barker's 
Waste (1907) ; Joseph Conrad's One Day More (1905) ; 
Frank Wedekind's Der Kammersdnger (1907) ; Tchek- 
hov's The Cherry Orchard (1913) ; George Moore's 



160 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Esther Waters (1911) ; and plays by Hauptmann, 
Sudermann, Heijermanns, Gogol, de Curel, Bjornson, 
Bennett, Fiona McLeod, Schnitzler, F. O. Francis, 
Houghton, and Strindberg. 

The example set by the Incorporated Stage Society 
has been followed by many other societies with similar 
purposes. The Play Actors were formed in 1907 for 
the production of Sunday performances of Shakespeare, 
new English plays, and translations. This society has 
to its credit the discovery of Miss Baker's fine play, 
Chains. The Stockport Garrick Society, English Play 
Society, The Oncomers Society (founded 1910), The 
Drama Society (founded 1911) represent much the 
same purposes. The Morality Play Society (1911) 
and The German Theatre Company (1908) serve func- 
tions suggested by their titles. 

More vital than any of these has been the work and 
influence of the Elizabethan Stage Society. The So- 
ciety was established in 1895 by Mr, William Poel, after 
he had conducted for ten years the Shakespeare Reading 
Society. The work of the Society has been of both 
an archaeological and artistic nature. It has been the 
purpose of the director to revitalize past principles of 
production. To this end he has been tireless in research 
and in production. From 1893 to 1913 the Elizabethan 
Stage Society produced fourteen Shakespeare plays, 
plays by Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, 
Ford, Jonson, Milton, Moliere, Goldsmith, Schiller, 
Euripides, as well as the Sakuntala, Everyman, Jacob 
and Esau, and Arden of Feversham. Among the most 
interesting productions was that of the First Quarto 



NEW ORGANIZATION 161 

Hamlet (1900) presented in Carpenter's Hall at Oxford. 
And one of most far-reaching influence was Everyman 
(July 20, 1901), presented by amateurs in the quad- 
rangle at Charterhouse in the open air. In this first 
performance the Creator appeared as a white-bearded 
man with a halo, and the part of Everyman was taken 
by a woman. By arrangement with the Elizabethan 
Stage Society, Ben Greet took Everyman to St. George's 
Hall, London, in 1902. This production, somewhat 
modified, was later seen in America. 

These things were largely the work of outsiders, work- 
ing as a rule in narrow surroundings. There had for 
many years been on foot in larger circles a project for 
a national theatre. The movement really had two 
sources. The first was in a plan, often broached, to do 
honor to Shakespeare. The second was in a broad plan 
to place the theatre of England on a national basis. As 
early as 1820 Charles Mathews had suggested the found- 
ing of a national theatre at Stratford. In 1879 the 
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford was opened. 
In the Fortnightly Review for 1889 William .Archer made 
a plea for an endowed theatre which should glorify the 
nation and liberate dramatic art. Codified plans for 
this institution are found in Archer and Barker's Scheme 
and Estimates for a National Theatre (1907). In 1908 
two schemes for a Shakespeare Memorial and a National 
Theatre were amalgamated. A citizen of London, Mr. 
Richard Badger, offered to the County Council of 
London three thousand five hundred pounds to start a 
movement for a Shakespeare Memorial. By 1913 the 
committee had acquired at a cost of sixty thousand 



162 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

pounds a site for a national theatre. The House of 
Commons was asked for the support of the State in the 
undertaking, and the motion was "talked out." There 
the matter rests. 

The demand for change in organization came not 
only from outsiders. It came as well from men of the 
theatre itself. The faults of the theatre became so 
pronounced that a cry for repertory theatres began to 
arise. What were the conditions in the professional 
theatre that called for correction ? As pointed out by 
the reformers they were the following : First, long runs ; 
second, the star system ; third, unsteadiness of em- 
ployment for the artist; fourth, no continuity of the 
company unit ; fifth, insuflBcient tuition for the actor ; 
sixth, the prohibitive cost of experiments; seventh, 
the debilitating control of the metropolis over the 
theatre of the provinces. All these faults it was the 
purpose of the new repertory theatre to correct. 

England had in fact had a repertory company for 
several years. Since the mid-eighties F. R. Benson had 
been touring England at the head of a provincial com- 
pany, which in 1886 he had established in the Shake- 
speare Memorial Theatre at Stratford for annual runs 
in Shakespeare plays. With some breaks Benson had 
maintained his association with the Stratford Theatre. 
For fifteen years he toured the provinces of England, 
Ireland, and Scotland, venturing but seldom into 
London, playing Shakespeare and the classical drama. 
According to Sir Sidney Lee the slogans of Mr. 
Benson's campaign are " Shakespeare and the National 
Drama", "Short Runs", "No Stars", "All-round Com- 



NEW ORGANIZATION 163 

petence", and "Unostentatious Setting." Up to 1906 
Benson's company had played thirty of Shakespeare's 
plays, those omitted being Love's Labour's Lost, The 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, All's Well that Ends Well, 
Cymbeline, Measure for Measure, Titus Andronicus and 
Troilus and Cressida. Among his most noteworthy 
achievements have been the playing of all three parts 
of Henry VI and the playing of Hamlet without cuts. 
The performance lasted six hours, one half being given 
in the afternoon and one half at night. For the first 
time, in this production (Lyceum, March, 1900) an Eng- 
lish audience was enabled to see the King and Polonius 
as the dramatist had created them. In the season 1899- 
1900 Benson took the Lyceum Theatre and played eight 
plays in repertory, including seven of Shakespeare and 
The Rivals. In spite of many handicaps and the ridicule 
of some case-hardened critics, he introduced to London 
the first true repertory company. He had always sup- 
plied actors to the London stage. Now he was sup- 
plying ideas as well. 

From the activities of the Elizabethan Stage Society 
and the Incorporated Stage Society, Granville Barker 
stepped nimbly on to the stage of professional experi- 
ment. In 1904 Mr. Barker, who had produced several 
plays for the Stage Society, was asked to produce The 
Two Gentlemen of Verona for the series of Shakespeare 
revivals which Mr. J. H. Leigh was giving in the Royal 
Court Theatre, Sloane Square, then under the manage- 
ment of Mr. Vedrenne. But Barker was not interested 
in Shakespeare alone. He had a new ax to grind, the 
sharp new instrument of the intellectual drama. As 



164 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Ibsen had been the rallying point of the stage experi- 
menters of the nineties, Shaw served the same purpose 
for the new century. Vedrenne and Barker joined in 
the production of Candida, which was presented at six 
matinee performances and was a success. The two 
managers continued to give matinees in the autumn of 
1904 and spring of 1905, and on May 1 of the latter year 
the Court Theatre came under the management of 
Vedrenne and Barker. Thus begins one of the most 
significant experiments of the new stage method. 

The Court Theatre was successful from tli£ start. Its 
most notable achievement was the discovery of a sane 
method of management in mitigation of the system of 
the commercial theatre. The Court Theatre was not 
a repertory theatre, but it went as far in this direction 
as possible to a commercial theatre at that or perhaps 
any time. Barker's best characteristic as an artist and 
manager has been his ability to keep his feet on the 
ground. He showed the qualities needed for an organ- 
izer of a new theatre, alertness and courage combined 
with common sense and an adherence to standards. He 
believes with Irving that art should pay for itself. For 
this reason he always withdrew plays when receipts 
began to fall. Plays were given as long as the interest 
was healthy and unstimulated. Meanwhile, matinees 
of other plays were given. 

The Court Theatre was notable for natural and culti- 
vated acting, and for its encouragement of the new 
drama. The most valuable service lay in raising Shaw 
to popularity. Of the nine hundred and eighty-eight 
performances given during the three years of this regime, 



NEW ORGANIZATION 165 

seven hundred and one were of Shaw plays. Eleven out 
of the thirty-two different plays were written by Shaw. 
In order of performances these plays are : Candida, 
John Bull's Other Island, How He Lied to Her Husband, 
You Never Can Tell, Man and Superman, Major Bar- 
bara, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, The Doctor's 
Dilemma, The Philanderer, Don Juan in Hell (from Man 
and Superman), The Man of Destiny. If the Court 
Theatre borrowed some strength from Shaw, it paid 
it out again in service to other dramatists. The list 
of plays it produced comprises the most important titles 
of the decade. John Galsworthy contributed to this 
theatre The Silver Box; Granville Barker, The Voysey 
Inheritance; Housman and Barker, Prunella; St. 
John Hankin, The Reiur7i of the Prodigal and The Char- 
ity that Began at Home. Three of Gilbert Murray's 
extraordinarily vivid transcriptions of Greek drama, 
Electra, The Hippolytus, The Trojan Women, were pro- 
duced at this theatre, and there were plays by Ibsen, 
Maeterlinck, Maurice Hewlett, and John Masefield. 

From the Court Theatre the associated managers 
went in the season 1907-1908 to the larger Savoy and 
there repeated several of the successes of the other 
house and added Coesar and Cleopatra, Arms and the 
Man, Gilbert Murray's Medea, and Galsworthy's Joy 
to their list. During this season the same managers 
gave The Devil's Disciple at the Queen's Theatre and 
conducted a series of special matinees at the Haymarket 
Theatre, presenting Shaw's Getting Married and Mase- 
field's The Tragedy of Nan. The production of Strife 
in a series of matinees at the Duke of York's Theatre 



166 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

in March, 1909, later transferred for evening per- 
formances to the Haymarket Theatre, estabUshes the 
connection with Mr. Charles Frohman which was to 
culminate in the Duke of York's Repertory Theatre. 

The Court Theatre had not been a true repertory 
theatre. But it so introduced the repertory idea as to 
lead Charles Frohman to undertake one of his most 
notable experiments. The Duke of York's Theatre was 
opened February 21, 1910, as a repertory theatre under 
the direction of Mr. Granville Barker. At first Mr. 
Barker had full command of the enterprise. As time 
went on he found his ideas bent by the counsel of other 
men. For this reason the season as a whole does 
not represent a consistent theory resolutely carried out. 
At the outset of the enterprise its spirit was expressed 
by Mr. Frohman : " A repertory theatre should be 
the first home of the ambitious young dramatist. I 
advise him to learn the conventions of the stage, but 
chiefly that he may be able to disregard them. I have 
no preference for any particular kind of play. I want 
what is good of any kind. One sometimes hears it 
said, *A good thing, but not a play.' This is one of the 
kinds I want." 

Whatever one may say of the list of plays presented 
by the Duke of York's Theatre, it would hardly be 
charged that the plays were conventional. The ma- 
jority of them violate the older definitions of a play. 
But though they were all daring enough, they were not 
the work of new writers. All of the writers whose 
plays were produced were well-known men of letters. 
No play of an unknown man was undertaken. During 



NEW ORGANIZATION 167 

seventeen weeks there were one hundred and twenty- 
eight performances of ten plays. The season opened 
with Galsworthy's Justice. Two nights later Shaw's 
Misalliance was produced. In inaugurating the under- 
taking with these two plays, the one a bourgeois tragedy 
of unrelieved intensity, the other one of the most con- 
versational of Shaw's discussion plays, the new manage- 
ment suflSciently elevated the house above the general. 
This caviare impression was borne out by such plays as 
Barrie's Old Friends, Meredith's The Sentimentalists, 
Barker's The Madras House, and Elizabeth Baker's 
Chains, all plays of a sustained intellectual appeal or of 
a rare and inscrutable artistry. Against the impression 
of these plays such lighter pieces as Barrie's The Twelve 
Pound Look, Pinero's Trelawny of the " Wells" (revival), 
Housman and Barker's Prunella, and Anthony Hope 
and Cosmo Gordon Lennox's Helena's Path were power- 
less to raise the spirits. The short season closed on a 
record pf interesting experiment but of no success in 
solving the problems of the repertory theatre. Though 
he had lost heavily by the venture, Mr. Frohman 
promised to try again, but the theatre was not reopened. 
Viewed in retrospect the repertory experiment 
showed several things. It was easier to create authors 
than it was to create an audience. The plays were all 
of a high level of artistry, so high in fact that there 
was not an audience large enough in London to support 
them. The "smaller audience" of which so much has 
been expected hardly sufficed to support a frequent 
change of bill. The business system for handling a rep- 
ertory theatre is much more difficult than that required 



168 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

for handling the ordinary commercial run. The prob- 
lems of publicity and of the distribution of tickets are so 
complex as to point to the need of a subscription system. 
Moreover, the expense of handling the frequent changes 
of bill on the stage was great. For acting and actors the 
repertory system is favorable. But for authors it is not 
so profitable. The Duke of York's Repertory Theatre 
subjected the repertory theory to an extreme test and 
only partially supplied solutions for the problems. 

The results reached at the Duke of York's Theatre 
were paralleled by the promised repertory venture of 
Mr. Herbert Trench. Mr. Trench expected to put into 
practice a diluted repertory idea at the Haymarket 
Theatre. In fact he gave beautiful productions to 
four excellent plays by the long run system. Chief of 
these was The Blue Bird, which had the unprecedented 
run (for a modern classic) of two years. Nor did 
Barker himself stick to the repertory plan. After leav- 
ing Mr. Frohman's theatre he started out at the Little 
Theatre in John Street, Adelphi, with Fanny's First 
Play, which had a run of over five hundred performances. 
And Vedrenne and Eadie, who with Barker had worked 
for the repertory idea, took the Royalty and performed 
Arnold Bennett's Milestones for hundreds of nights. The 
last promise of a repertory theatre in London was made 
by Frederick Whelen in 1911, but the plan was not 
realized. 

If the repertory theatre idea had met a setback in 
the metropolis it had been more successful in the prov- 
inces. Some one has said that London has a repertory 
spread before it all the time. But this is not the case 



NEW ORGANIZATION 169 

in the smaller cities. During the last decade of the old 
century there had been a decrease rather than an 
increase in the number and quality of the theatrical 
offerings in the great English cities outside of London. 
And so the first full expression as well as the first suc- 
cess of the repertory theatre idea came in the English 
cities of the second class in population. One of the 
most notable movements of the new century has been 
to broaden the field of activity of the theatre from a 
center in London to cover the map of the British islands. 

As Barker's name leads any discussion of the London 
repertory theatre, the name of Miss A. E. F. Horniman 
is found to dominate achievements in the provinces. 
Miss Horniman, a woman of independent resources, 
had shown her interest in the new stage as far back as 
1894, when she had provided the money for Miss 
Florence Farr's performance of Arjns and the Man at the 
Avenue Theatre. In 1903 she became interested in 
Mr. Yeats' plans for an Irish repertory theatre, and 
bought and remodeled the Mechanics Institute Hall, 
which she turned over to the company of the Irish 
National Theatre as the Abbey Theatre in 1904, rent 
free for six years. This benefaction went far toward 
establishing the work of the Irish players. 

Miss Horniman opened her Manchester Repertory 
Theatre in 1907 at the Midland Theatre. The same 
year she bought the Gaiety Theatre, remodeled it, and 
opened it in the fall of 1908 with its own company, 
equipment, code of management, and, before long, its 
own authors. The aims of the new theatre had been 
outlined in 1907 : "(a) A repertory theatre with a regular 



170 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

change of program, not wedded to any one^ school 
of dramatists but thoroughly catholic, embracing the 
finest writing of the best authors of all ages and with 
an especially widely-open door to present-day British 
writers, who will not now need to sigh in vain for a 
hearing, provided only that they have something to 
say worth listening to, and say it in an interesting and 
original manner. 

"(b) A permanent Manchester stock company of 
picked front-rank actors. 

" (c) EflBcient production. 

" (d) Popular prices." 

The repertory standard so outlined has been upheld 
from the start. Under the direction of Miss Horniman 
and the directors, Mr. B. Iden Payne and Mr. Lewis 
Casson, an efficient company has been provided. 
During the regular season it played to successful busi- 
ness in Manchester and special tours were organized 
to London, Dublin, Glasgow, and America. It has 
sent out its actors into other theatres in the provinces 
and in London. Li repertory it has maintained a true 
catholicity. There have been produced plays by 
Euripides, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sheri- 
dan, Goldsmith, Ben Jonson, and a full complement 
of modern authors. More than this, this theatre in- 
augurated a Midland school of playwrights. The first 
new production was Charles McEvoy's severely realistic 
study, David Ballard. Stanley Houghton's Hindle 
Wakes and The Younger Generation were both first per- 
formed by the Manchester players, as was Harold 
Brighouse's The Odd Man Out. In addition to these, 



NEW ORGANIZATION 171 

Basil Dean, Allen Monkhouse, and half a dozen other 
successful writers have received their first encourage- 
ment at this theatre. In late years there has been a 
little thinning down of the company and of the corps of 
authors on account of the allurements of London. This 
seems to suggest one of the great problems for the rep- 
ertory theatre. 

The Manchester Repertory Theatre was a mother 
of theatres. In 1904 the Scottish Playgoers, Lim- 
ited, had been established in Glasgow after the fashion 
of the London Stage Society. In 1909 the Scottish 
Repertory Theatre was established to continue the 
work of the Playgoers. The theatre is in every sense 
a citizens' theatre, established by Scotsmen to make 
Scotland independent of the London Theatre. But the 
Scottish theatre is far more eclectic than is the Irish 
Theatre. It has presented original plays by J. J. Bell, 
Harold Brighouse, Harold Chapin, Neil Monro, and its 
list of borrowed pieces is representative. This theatre 
like others of its, class depends upon the support of the 
"nucleus audience." 

The Liverpool Repertory Theatre was established in 
1911 on a limited liability plan with eight hundred 
shareholders. Though well managed, the company 
failed to secure support, and the end of the second 
season saw a deficit of two thousand pounds. In 1914 
was introduced the plan of managing the theatre by the 
Commonwealth Plan. Actors, actresses, attendants, 
stage staff, orchestra, — all share the obligations and 
the profits. Minimum fixed charges are set for all 
purposes, and income above these is shared. This 



172 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

is the first use of this plan of theatre management in 
England. 

In 1913 the Birmingham Repertory Theatre was 
estabUshed, and in 1914 Lord Howard de Walden sub- 
sidized the Welsh National Drama Company. The 
best work that has come out of this latter company has 
been J. O. Francis's Change, which was awarded the 
Welsh Drama Competition prize in 1912. In 1911 a 
Repertory Theatre Association was established among 
the theatres of London and the provinces in the inter- 
ests of the repertory plan. 

The problem of the repertory theatre has not been 
solved. Barker gave it a test in London and discarded 
it for a time. It had a greater immediate success in the 
provinces because of the demand there for entertainment 
of a high class. That this demand was a little artificial, 
the result of much talk about the drama, there seems 
little doubt. The hardest things the repertory theatres 
have had to fight against are division in the councils of 
management and defections from the ranks at the call 
of the metropolis. Another thing that subjects the 
repertory scheme to strain is a striking success in 
one of its plays. According to present systems of 
support, there is no way in art or commercial common- 
sense to combat the run of a play that the people want 
to see. In London this has served to perpetuate the 
long run ; in the provincial theatres it has operated to 
divide the companies. Tree's apothegm "When is a 
Repertory Theatre not a Repertory Theatre? When 
it is a success", contains much truth in a nutshell. Per- 
haps the chief value of the repertory theatre has been 



NEW ORGANIZATION 173 

as a ground of experiment and an incentive to composi- 
tion. 

Among the theatre movements of the new century the 
one that has had the largest measure of success is the 
Irish National Theatre. This theatre was established 
at a time to take at the flood the interest in things 
theatrical that had been developing in Europe. Its 
growth was aided by local conditions and by opportune 
outside help. It had a spiritually coherent audience 
to appeal to, it developed in a nation that had always 
been known for histrionic gifts, it appealed to a people 
who have a faculty for supporting "causes", and it pro- 
vided a means of expression for an acute spirit of nation- 
alism. Moreover, it made good friends, not the least 
serviceable of whom was the Englishwoman, Miss 
Horniman, who first provided the company a theatre. 
In a large sense the Irish Theatre must be considered 
a very successful local manifestation of a movement 
which was active throughout Europe. 

The Irish Theatre is distinguished from other move- 
ments in theatre organization by the fact that it alone 
started as a movement among writers rather than among 
producers. At this point the spirit of the Irish renas- 
cence enters to distinguish this theatre. Of the earlier 
writers in this renascence few were dramatists. They 
were workers in a literature far removed from the rigor- 
ous rules of the theatre. The Irish theatre was the 
result of the marrying of the Irish lyrical and story- 
telling genius with the renascence of the theatre in other 
countries. The men who were responsible were those 
who had been in contact with the latest movements on 



174 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the continent, William Butler Yeats was a mystic and 
decadent who had been in Paris during the days of 
Antoine's experiment with the Theatre Libre. George 
Moore had been educated in the French studios. In 

1891 he had worked for a free theatre in London ; in 

1892 he had written for this theatre The Strike at Arling- 
ford. Edward Martyn was the writer of the most 
severely Ibsenic play of the decade. Like Yeats, J. M. 
Synge had cultivated his mind on the Continent before 
he turned his pen to the treatment of primitive folk of 
his own race. Only Lady Gregory had been untouched 
by the movements of other countries and now main- 
tained her pure Irish outlook. 

Though the Irish theatre started as a part of a world 
movement, it contrived to make a most significant 
contribution to this movement. The organizers were 
fortunate in their lack of resources in the theatre. While 
the Englishman and the Frenchman had to discard the 
old before he could establish a new institution, the 
Irishman was hampered by no heavy theatrical machin- 
ery that could hang like an incubus on his efforts. 
This poverty in resources compelled the development 
of the virtues that have been most serviceable, the 
virtues of a true amateur spirit, of a natural code of 
acting, of simple and unspoiled composition of plays. 
It compelled the organizers to begin at the beginning 
and gave them all the advantages of so beginning in the 
possibility provided for educating audience, players, 
and playwrights. 

The Irish Theatre has had a significant place in the 
history of the recent English movements of the theatre. 



NEW ORGANIZATION 175 

This theatre has been for England as well as for Ireland 
a trying ground, an experiment in the return to first 
principles. No one could do these things so well as the 
Irish. On their own stage their light shines far beyond 
their own land. They have naturalness, character, a 
knack of reality. As long as this theatre remains true 
to the principles for which it was established, it cannot 
fail by stimulus and example to be of first importance 
to the theatre of England. 



CHAPTER X 

George Bernard Shaw 

No man in the modern English theatre has been sub- 
jected to so much confused thinking as George Bernard 
Shaw. The most talked about man of his time, he has 
been most misunderstood, or most variously understood. 
We fear that the subject of Shaw has been made un- 
necessarily difficult. It has been subjected to that 
faculty of "common nonsense", to that "invincible 
determination to tell and be told lies about every- 
thing" to which he refers when he writes of the Anglo- 
Saxon people. 

Whatever Shaw is, he is not primarily a dramatist. 
Before he came to the writing of plays he had expressed 
himself as lecturer, writer on social and economic topics, 
novelist, and critic. A playwright in the sense in which 
that term is used for Moliere or Shakespeare, for Sheri- 
dan or Pinero, he has never become. His plays have 
never achieved to anything like popularity or even 
general acceptance in the theatre. In spite of his 
great influence, an audience does not as yet exist that 
can support them for long on the stage. Furthermore, 
he has not tried to write plays which can stand on their 

176 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 177 

own feet without explanation or glossary. His plays 
are both more and less than plays. They are less in 
that they require prefaces, expanded business and 
characterization to complete their meaning. They are 
more in that after the purposes of representation are 
satisfied, the author goes on to serve other purposes 
which lie in the field of exposition and argument. 

By some Shaw has been given credit for creating the 
modern English theatre. Far from building the modern 
English theatre, Shaw would not exist as a dramatist 
but for the building that others had done before him, 
work which he adopted and turned to his own purposes. 
Shaw was the first playwright in England to find ready 
for him instrumentalities for the unhampered expres- 
sion of his point of view. The two instrumentalities 
upon which Shaw has depended are : first, the publi- 
cation of plays in book form; and second, the free 
organization of the theatre. Without these he would 
not exist as playwright, and both these instruments 
were supplied by others. Shaw seized the drama as 
the best means of exploiting his own vision of truth. 

Just what was the point of view, the test of truth to 
which Shaw desu-ed to give currency ? He has made it 
his business to subject everything in the mental world 
to as stable and undeluded a standard of personal 
judgment as the British Islands have known since 
Swift. Shaw very early revealed his formula. He has 
played with it and misrepresented it, but it has remained 
since his early youth. The first feature by which it 
may be known is Shaw's peculiar quality of revolt. 
From his earliest youth, when he joined successively the 



178 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Zetetical Society, the Land Reform Union, the Social 
Democratic Federation, and the Fabian Society, he 
has been an apostle of revolt, but revolt rationalized 
and made secure by numbers and by common sense. 
Here lies the first key to Shaw's apparent inconsistency. 
An absolutist in mental processes, he is a pragmatist 
in action. Arguing against the institution of the family, 
he would live in this institution as long as it survives. 
Believing in a reconstruction of society, he neither 
believes in getting it too soon nor in such changes as 
would shake the foundations of the social bond. Al- 
ways stepping apart, he is never willing to stand alone. 
In other words, his mind and his pen were to be free, 
but his body and his person had to live in the world. 

This characteristic is explained by the next quali- 
fication of his mind. Shaw is a thorough participant. 
That philosophy of the citizenship of the artist for 
which Ibsen stood finds a true expression in his life. 
He has been from the start interested in everything 
and has made all things his own affair. But partici- 
pation did not mean for him working in a land ofiice, 
explaining new electrical devices, and learning the tricks 
of men. His participation was mental. The mental 
quality of his participation was revealed in the first 
letter he wrote to the papers, a letter censuring the 
Moody and Sankey "revival" system in religion. He 
has felt the obligation not so much to put his shoulder 
to the wheel, his hand to the whip, as his mind to the 
problem. He knew that mental participation is the 
most unusual as well as the most valuable kind. There 
are many men who will follow the easy morality of 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 179 

fidelity to a cause to one man who will study the sources 
of the morality of that cause. It is this gift of mental 
participation, and not altogether, as many have sup- 
posed, his Irish contrariness, that has made Shaw 
inject a new standard of judgriient into issues that 
seemed to be settled. 

But Shaw is not a philosopher. One who searches 
through his works for a consistent explanation of the 
principles of things is doomed to disappointment. 
Shaw is no more a constructor of a watertight system of 
truth than was Ibsen, but for a different reason. Ibsen 
was primarily an artist and therefore interested, not 
in the cause, but in the concrete. Shaw is a tester of 
values, and therefore more interested in man's experi- 
ments and essays toward truth than in any abstract 
vision of truth. That quality of participation which 
he represents disqualifies him for philosophy. The 
philosopher is not a mental participant in the world. 
He is a man who uses his mind to deny the concrete as- 
pects of the world. Shaw uses his mind to react to the 
concrete aspects of the world. His mental participa- 
tion consists in an honest mental evaluation of things 
around about him. For this task he is well equipped 
by keenness and common sense and lack of gullibility. 
His personal equation is slight. Because he is so honest 
and so well instrumented it is said he subjects every- 
thing to himself. But he makes no codes, spins no 
definitions, searches out no first causes. 

Though he has no philosophy he has a test that is 
so absolute as to amount almost to a philosophy. It 
is hard, self-sufficing, and immediate in its judgments. 



180 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

This test qualifies all he does in criticism, commentary, 
censure, and in playwriting. By some it is called ra- 
tionalism, or intellectualism. These terms would serve 
if they are made to seem sufficiently inclusive. Shaw's 
test, which he insists lies at the heart of all men if they 
only keep themselves alert to listen to it, is the test of 
that logic of events which is working its way through 
men and all the forces of the world. It is not a prin- 
ciple of Will, for it lies outside of men as well as within 
them. Here and there he calls it the Life Force. 
Scholastic reason too often runs counter to the Life 
Force. Shaw would identify human reason with the 
workings of the Life Force. He is a believer in the 
human reason, a disciple of Samuel Butler in believing 
that all the Life Force has achieved it stores away within 
the man, to speak thereafter in the quieter voice of intui- 
tion. Intuition with him is as cold in judging accord- 
ing to the eternal process of nature as reason has always 
been in judging by its arbitrary and man-made codes. 
And though he is no scientist or vivisectionist, he has 
no more respect for the softer virtues than have these. 
His attitudes are as rigorously assumed, are as little 
subject to sentiments of kindness or goodness or mercy 
as are those of the stoics or materialists. 

Shaw is first, last, and all the time a critic. He 
searches the object of his criticism for its underlying 
ideas and subjects these to the test of his logic of events. 
Most of his criticism is of two classes : First, art criti- 
cism, of music, literature, painting, drama; second, 
criticism of society's formulated ideas in religion, poli- 
tics, and morality. His art criticism is of a specific 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 181 

type. It is revealed in all of his attitudes toward art, 
in his plays and writings. " Artist philosophers are the 
only sort of persons I take seriously", he says. Art is 
to him the expression in resolute self-control of the proc- 
esses of the hidden logic of life. The only function of 
art is the interpretation, the systematizing of the life 
forces. All that gives entertainment, that supplies 
pleasure, the beauty that is its own justification, he cares 
nothing for. And he cares nothing for the patter of the 
studios. When, after his unsuccessful efforts as a novel- 
ist, he turned to musical and dramatic criticism on The 
Star, The World, The Scot's Observer, and The Saturday 
Review, he brought to it the same faculties of mind 
he had shown in his earlier revolts and in his novels. 
It was a mind resolutely set on its own tangential view, 
a fundamental code of judgment, a distrust of all 
formulas of whatever type, even his own, and a com- 
plete lack of all sense of form and of all regard for 
technical considerations as such in art. He brought 
to bear upon art and music certainly a stimulating, 
even a renovating, method, but it was a method which 
would have had no validity in criticism up to his time. 
And he criticizes social ideas in the same way. He tests 
men as if they were art and art as if it were man. 
Against formulas of belief, of conduct, or control, against 
rubber-stamp judgments imputing virtue or vice by 
codes his first tendency is to turn aside. He always 
keeps his mind free of entangling alliances of faith or 
enthusiasm. 

Shaw sells his wares. In a day of universal educa- 
tion, universal reading, and universal franchise, broad 



182 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

currency in ideas and standards must be the ideal. If a 
thing is good enough to exist it is good enough to dis- 
tribute. If it is not good enough to distribute it should 
not be. Shaw knows that very effective systems have 
been invented by men for giving currency to the wares 
of commerce. He finds that the wares themselves are 
not cheapened by the mode of distributing them. In 
fact it is only the honest ware that can be distributed 
long. He asks whether honest thinking is any less 
worthy of distribution than honest merchandise. If it 
is not it too will only gain its end by the means which will 
give it broadest currency. It is important to under- 
stand in Shaw the combination of honesty and original- 
ity in wares and a remarkable faculty for their distri- 
bution. In this way he expresses his policy: "Spare 
no labor to find out the right thing to say ; and then 
say it with the most exasperating levity, as if it were the 
first thing that would come into any one's head." 

Shaw has not come to any of his work full fledged. 
In fact, he has never as yet attained command of any 
technique. He has been so prodigal of ideas that he 
has found it difficult to give them body. And he has 
not stinted work in the attempt. His novels, written 
between 1880 and 1883, are interesting as showing the 
fund of his ideas and the difficulty he found in their 
management. They attack the same institutions he 
was later to attack in his plays. In The Irrational 
Knot, Love Avnong the Artists, Cashel Byron s Profession, 
The Unsocial Socialist, we have middle-class bigotry, 
pallid ascetic artists, women pursuing men, rational 
breakings of moral codes, the problems of wealth, the 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 183 

crime of poverty, ridicule of the ideas of sport and 
heroism, just as we have them in the plays. But the 
construction quite unfitted the novels for use. No one 
would buy wares done up in such a package. He seems 
always to have been lost between the necessity of fur- 
thering his mental flights and the necessity of providing 
a medium of action for his narrative. The result was 
a wild hodgepodge, undoubtedly original, and no less 
truly without design or sequence. What Shaw needed 
to find was a naked medium for the expression of his 
ideas, a medium of art that would permit the maximum 
of theorizing and a minimum of narrative. This he 
found in the drama. With no affection for drama as 
such, Shaw seized upon it as the means of putting over 
his ideas. 

That Shaw looked upon the drama as an instrument 
only is revealed in the manner in which he handled the 
form. From the first he did not attempt to make the play 
self-sufficing. He combined it with all other forms of 
writing necessary to express his ideas. The play now 
comes to have a special function. It is not concerned 
with the telling of a story or the creation of characters. 
It is the precipitation of many mental reactions on 
things of moment ~at the time. No other form offers 
the facilities to an author to express many points of 
view without tying himself to any, to perform labora- 
tory experiments with ideas by identifying them with 
characters who speak for themselves and not the 
author. In this way the play protects the author far 
more than does the novel. But when he has thrown 
the idea to his characters to play with, Shaw shows 



184 THE CONTEMPORAEY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

where his real interest lies in summing up his own con- 
tribution to the discussion in a preface sometimes as 
long as the play itself. 

This instrumental treatment of drama has raised a 
new kind of play. After his first attempts at play- 
writing Shaw discards all traditions of dramatic con- 
struction and proceeds to write plays upon new de- 
signs. To understand his play we have to consider the 
materials out of which it is made. Until recent times 
plays have belonged to three orders according to sub- 
stance. First, there was the idealistic play, which was 
constructed out of the magnified ideals of a romantic 
code. To this class belong both the so-called classic 
plays and the romantic plays of Shakespeare. This 
order of play has deteriorated through the stereotyping 
of its ideals, and through sentimentalizing. Second, 
there is the kind of play that takes the manners of a 
people or a circle as indexes of its character and civili- 
zation. To this class belong the satires of manners and 
social conventions of Moliere and the comedies of the 
English Restoration. Plays of this type are never 
subject to the abuse under which romance suffers, being 
protected by the acid of wit. 

The third type of play, for which the nineteenth 
century was largely responsible, was the realistic play, 
which attempted to place upon the stage the present- 
ment of reality in its bodily semblances, neither mag- 
nified nor idealized. We cannot yet say that this 
attempt has been successful. At its best it is not alto- 
gether true to type, as its real substance is often con- 
fused with a didactic intent. When the extraneous 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 185 

element of purpose is omitted, the problems of observa- 
tion and choice become so pressing as to be insoluble. 

Shaw belongs to none of these classes. Yet he dis- 
plays characteristics of all three. He applies to a new 
substance traits derived from the romantic play, from 
the play of manners and from the realistic play. The 
material of his plays is the mental substance in which 
modern life is lived. He believes that the most im- 
portant thing in modern life is the ideas out of which 
we make the world we live in, that in truth men and 
women have moved into a zone of thought. In this zone 
they meet, they govern their action by its laws, they 
incorporate its rigors into their characters. In such a 
zone men and women are very much aware of the 
thought value of all phenomena, and the best of them 
become personified mental points of view. Shaw asks 
of all his characters how they react mentally to the 
world they live in. Are they merely parrots, do they 
think like books, are their thoughts provided for them, 
are they myopic with convention, do they stand against 
the wind, have they normal vision ? 

We may identify Shaw's characters by the fact that 
they are all talking characters. Gone are all the inhi- 
bitions, the inversions that conduce to silence. There 
never has been such a gallery of freely expressive indi- 
viduals. Only such a poet as Marchbanks speaks in 
innuendos. All the rest are volleys of speech. This 
explains and justifies his long speeches. They are not 
long with bombast. They are long because the speaker 
has something to say. Many of Shaw's characters seem 
but lately to have discovered the faculty of speech. 



186 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

So they talk with zest. These people are all talking 
about their own business — which is everybody's busi- 
ness. They are self-elected representatives in the 
congress of opinion which is modern democracy. Other 
plays deal with ideas in solution. Shaw's deal with 
them in contest. The ideas, even the talk, become 
dramatic. Where there had been the struggle of wills 
there is the struggle of ideas and the struggle of speech. 

Shaw has called himself a dramatic realist and has 
repudiated the well-made play and the tricks of romanti- 
cism. But there are factors of the romantic in the free 
imagination that he uses in the structure of the play. 
In planning the play there is no dependence upon imi- 
tation of social forms. He is fanciful, even fantastic, 
in arranging the plots that will release his ideas. From 
the play of manners he takes the grace of wit, the de- 
pendence upon the surface as an index of the soul. 
And from the realistic play he takes men and women 
in their natural magnitudes and environments, con- 
structing out of commonplace individuals a structure 
of social suggestiveness. All of this is delivered in a 
thoroughly individual way, with no care for form and 
no limitations derived either from the necessity of pro- 
duction or the principles of tact and balance. Shaw's 
carelessness in construction is a thing of principle. 
Having no respect for art canons as such, he pays no 
attention to them. He has been called an Ibsenian. 
No evidence of this is shown in any of his plays, except 
that they deal with a society that has been fed on 
Ibsenic and pseudo-Ibsenic ideas. 

Shaw has created very few characters. None of his 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 187 

characters live outside the idea symbolized. Shaw is quite 
willing to make a character talk outside his own nature, 
and to introduce characters who sound no necessary 
note in the orchestra. The truth is that Shaw is not inter- 
ested in characters except as vehicles of ideas. The play 
itself is a fabric not of character but of the conceptions 
that generate character. And so the dramatic with 
Shaw comes not from a clash of characters but from a 
clash of ideas. This does not mean that he ignores 
men and women or fails to realize them. He realizes 
them only in their ideas. If ideas run riot it is because 
the character speaking is skilled in intellectual analysis. 
Shaw measures a man partly by his articulateness. So 
he never loses his character in his discourse. His 
clashes are mental and at the same time dramatic and 
unforced. When emotion appears it is as a coloring of 
thought, as a shooting through of the idea with the 
pressure of life. Let no one think that by reading the 
speeches of the most eloquent of Shaw's characters 
he is finding out Shaw. That character may be the 
most deluded in his gallery. Shaw does not guide his 
characters in their thinking. It is rather through the 
character that does not think that Shaw's own opinions 
are revealed, cloaked in a hearty scorn. 

One hears continually of Shaw's wit and paradox. 
He is too honest a man to satisfy himself with any such 
easy scheme as denial of the apparent. His wit is 
partly for the purpose of selling his wares. It is partly 
a preservative of his thought. Too much has been 
made of his whimsies, his turnings about, his surprises. 
Upon those who see only folly in him we may expect 



188 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the shafts of his satire to fall. Those who look for the 
jester find nothing better nor worse. But he is unwill- 
ing to permit a legend of himself to develop. The man 
who turns the white light on patriotism, on Caesar, on 
Napoleon, on Christianity, and love, could hardly per- 
mit the accretion of folklore about himself in his life- 
time. 

At the time that Shaw was facing his career as a 
dramatist he had gone so far in his career that A. B. 
Walkley could call him in The Fortnightly "one of the 
most courageous, most lucid, most remorselessly logi- 
cal thinkers of the day, and the invasion of the theatre 
by such a man is an event bound to leave its mark." 
Shaw was to wait long for the realization of his promise. 
He had written dramas steadily for ten years, and had 
ten plays to his credit, before he came into success as a 
produced dramatist. By 1903 he had WTitten Widow- 
ers' Houses, The Philanderer, Mrs. Warren's Profession, 
Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, You 
Never Can Tell, The Devil's Disciple, CcBsar and Cleo- 
patra, Captain Brasshound's Conversion. Of these the 
first had been played without success by the Inde- 
pendent Theatre (December 9, 1892) ; the second 
had been turned down by Mr. Grein ; the third had 
been refused a license by the censor. Arms and 
the Man had been played for about four months at 
the Avenue Theatre, beginning April 21, 1894. You 
Never Can Tell had been rehearsed by Cyril Maude in 
1897 and withdrawn without production. The same 
year Janet Achurch (Mrs. Charles Charrington) had 
taken Candida to the provinces. The Devil's Disciple 



GEOEGE BERNARD SHAW 189 

had been played by Richard Mansfield in America. In 
1900 Candida had been played for six matinees in London. 
In all this period there had been only one London suc- 
cess. In 1898, having failed on the stage, Shaw deter- 
mined to print his plays, and the first seven in the above 
list were printed under the title Plays, Pleasant and 
Unpleasant. The remaining three followed under the 
title of Plays for Puritans. The success of the plays in 
printed form prepared the way for trial on the stage. 
In 1904 Vedrenne and Barker opened the Court Theatre 
with a repertory predominantly of Shaw. And with 
the composition of Man and Superman Shaw enters on 
the high stage of his career. 

In his early plays Shaw attempted to write for the 
stage of conyjentions. Widoivers' Houses had been be- 
gun in collaboration with William Archer as early 
as 1885. It was not taken up again until 1892, when 
it was completed by Shaw alone for the Independent 
Theatre. Shaw's first three plays were marred by an 
animus of censure he was not to show in his later plays. 
Widowers' Houses was directed against slum landlord- 
ism ; The Philanderer was a shaft against false Ibsen- 
ites and those who feared the logic of Ibsenism, aiming 
as well to expose " the grotesque sexual compacts made 
between men and women"; Mrs. Warren's Profession 
was a tract on false standards of respect between parents 
and children and a false system of public morality that 
drives women to the business of prostitution . The plays 
remind one of Shaw's novels in the impression they give 
of irksomeness and incomplete realization of powers. 
They are subject to the charge of arbitrarily attacking 



/ 



190 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

a current formula in order to set up another formula 
no less false. Only a few characters stand out, no- 
tably Grace and Charteris from The Philanderer, and 
Vivie and Crofts from Mrs. Warren's Profession. The 
hardness of the author's treatment is relieved by few 
pleasant subterfuges of wit. 

In his later plays Shaw avoids the mistakes of his 
first plays. Wrong thinking is examined, but the 
author does not again make the mistake of exchanging 
tweedledum for tweedledee. He now begins to play 
with ideas rather than exhaustively to work with them. 
He becomes more impudent. As he does so his hand 
becomes more free. He takes an attitude of free public 
discussion, censorious but not destructive. For a man 
who answers so few questions as does Shaw, whose 
function is provocative rather than regulative, this 
attitude is better than that of particularized attack. 

If you are going to throw away romance you may 
at any rate use anti-romance to good effect. By so 
doing you secure some of the thrill of romance and the 
wit of satire. In many of his plays, notably Arms 
and the Man, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, The 
Devil's Disciple, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, 
Shaw continues to use a plot of the most romantic 
and melodramatic character. That Arms and the Man 
started with any purpose of social correction cannot be 
believed. The author probably undertook it with the 
intention of writing a good stage play and was diverted 
from the normal by his own particular vision of truth. 
If one thinks only of the story he is lost in admiration 
for the ingenuity and freshness of the author's plotting. 



GEOKGE BERNARD SHAW 191 

It is a true comic opera plot, joining with Captain Brass- 
bound's Conversion in a display of a fantastic gift. There 
is a Gilbertian touch in Shaw's treatment of warfare as 
a business-like thing and in the victory of the business- 
like Bluntschli, owner of hotels and unromantic warrior, 
over the idealist Saranoff . This play developed some 
elements of popularity and ran for twelve weeks at the 
Avenue Theatre. 

Shaw has often been accused of taking his themes by 
contraries from the popular interests of the time. He 
is careful to explain that rather than seeing by oppo- 
sites he sees more normally than ordinary men. The 
action of Candida Shaw sets in the midst of the theories 
of social meliorism that were common in the nineties. 
The church of the Reverend James Mavor Morell is 
managed on the principle of a social center. Mr. 
Burgess, the impossible father of Candida, has filled 
himself with the terms of social unrest. Though Shaw 
usually saved himself from the charge of any particular 
program by the scattering of his rays, Candida dis- 
plays a certain cogency and intensity of feeling. The 
play seems to be woven of two fabrics. The one is the 
social fabric of reform, represented by Morell' s public 
life, his sermons, his worshipers and hangers-on. The 
other is the domestic life of the Morell household, a 
little psychic area of intimate contacts that has been 
more illuminated than any such tract in modern dra- 
matic literature. All the characters live in the zones of 
extreme civilization. Morell lives in an aura of elo- 
quence. Candida is a woman who knows the thought 
value of her sex. Sex is not only a disquieting fact 



192 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

to her ; it is a phenomenon which she holds under the 
scrutiny of her inteUigei^ce. For this reason she has no 
pruderies and affectations. And because she under- 
stands herself she understands men and applies to them 
no cruder judgment than herself demands. And 
Marchbanks is one of Shaw's only characters to live 
on the level of the higher reason. All the others have 
normal or subnormal insight. He has supernormal in- 
sight. When these three characters come together there 
is pure drama. 

As drama one prefers to let this play speak for itself. 
To the writer it seems to be the nearest realization to 
the drama of developed intelligences that our time has 
brought forth. It is the kind of drama Browning would 
have written had he used another medium than verse. 
The play cannot be called fantasy, for its thought struc- 
ture is too logical and articulate. It is not realism. 
One thinks of it in connection with some of the more 
confiding plays of Ibsen as showing how far Shaw's 
joyous medium goes beyond Ibsen's sentimental 
medium. The play has fewer Shavianisms than any 
of his others. It is true it has Prossy and Burgess, 
but they hardly enter the play as one remembers 
it. In this play we see appearing the questions of art 
and sex that come up again in Man and Superman and 
The Doctor's Dilemma. In Man and Superman the Life 
Force is victorious. In Candida the artist is victorious. 

Candida is an answer to the feminists, but she is an 
answer to the "majerful man" as well. She is a dan- 
gerous advocate to take on either side of the vexed 
questions of sex relationship. Chief among Shaw's 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 193 

characters she represents his ideal of reasonableness 
tempered by humor. It is significant that the best of 
Shaw's " commonsense " characters should be a woman. 
Candida was not produced in London until 1904, when it 
made a part of the Court Theatre repertory. 

Among the ideas by which society runs itself is that 
of the hero. Men are continually building themselves 
gods to worship. Shaw has no objection to such a 
process so far as society is concerned, but he thinks we 
should be careful to distinguish between the human 
original and the figure society makes of him. And he 
thinks too that we should continually subject our heroes 
to the test of common sense and the human standard. 
Some men he believes are enjoying a place in history dis- 
proportionate to the value of their contributions. This 
is what may be called the unearned increment of fame. 
Some men squat themselves down at a corner in history 
and wait for events to build a city there. It is not so 
much Shaw's idea that they should be dispossessed as 
that they be seen in true relation to the contribution 
made by society. The figures Shaw attacks are 
Napoleon, Shakespeare, Julius Csesar and Cleopatra, 
and Catherine the Great. 

Napoleon is treated in the one-act play. The Man 
of Destiny, written for Richard Mansfield but refused 
by him. The part of the woman was later played by 
Ellen Terry. Napoleon is shown as a little boor who 
set himself down at the junction of the nineteenth cen- 
tury and the French Revolution and permitted destiny 
to take care of his fame. Not only their own power 
elevates Julius Csesar and Cleopatra. It is the power 



194 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

of romance in the imaginations of great poets. Of 
these the chief weaver of illusions of majesty has been 
Shakespeare. So great has been Shakespeare's gift 
as a dreamer of lofty dreams that he himself has been 
raised to an eminence among the heroes. Shaw impu- 
dently and unsuccessfully attacks this illusion in The 
Dark Lady of the Sonnets, written some years later. In 
Ccesar and Cleopatra Shaw treats the great figures of an- 
tiquity in a more kindly manner. Here we have treated 
in human guise beings who by other pens had been 
reared into glowing abstractions. The sketchy Caesar 
of Shakespeare is given some warmth and humanity in 
Shaw's wise and witty elderly gentleman, and the idea 
of a young Cleopatra with unawakened potentialities 
is a stroke of genius. This is one of Shaw's plays that 
outdoes romance in a real fervor of corrective imagina- 
tion. It would seem that if Candida is Shaws' best 
beloved heroine Caesar is his best beloved hero. As 
played by Forbes-Robertson he is a masterpiece. Shaw 
returns to historical portraiture in The Great Catherine, 
a farcical bit of horseplay, revolving about the great 
Russian Queen. 

You Never Can Tell is the play in which Shaw finally 
learned to handle his materials with careless grace. 
He had been trying to write " good " plays for some time. 
Now he gives up the effort and determines to write Shaw 
plays. Cj^ril Maude has told us something of the 
circumstances of the composition of You Never Can Tell. 
Never was a play written with less regard for the laws 
of composition. The present critic is unable to look 
upon this play as anything else than a huge joke. Who 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 195 

are the characters you would not expect to see on the 
stage? A dentist and a waiter. What themes seem 
closed to comedy treatment? The bickerings of a 
miserable married couple ; the disrespect of children for 
elders. It was Shaw's opinion that the stage carpenter 
had been tinkering not only with stage plays, but that 
he had put his hand to life until life itself had become a 
matter of tricks and effects, of speeches and properties, 
of "effective" motives, ideals of sacrifice, climaxes, and 
workmanlike arrangements of events. In an age when 
the world was beginning to make itself a stage, the best 
the stage could do would be to make itself as tantaliz- 
ing as possible, to shake itself free from the reflections 
back and forth between a regulated life and a regulated 
theatre, even if it had to break the mirrors. There is 
something in the title You Never Can Tell that reminds 
one of the easy carelessness of Shakespeare's Twelfth 
Night; or, What You Will. In almost every other play 
seen on the stage you always could tell. And that was 
what was the trouble with the stage. The natural 
part of the world lives by fits and snatches. Dentists' 
chairs are scenes in everyday life. Waiters have ad- 
vocates for sons. Children do not respect their parents, 
and often parents do not deserve it. Many families 
are better apart than together, especially families of 
"talkers ", and waiters are men who must have a phil- 
osophy of some kind, otherwise they could not be good 
waiters. This is one of the most delightful of Shaw's 
plays. 

The Devil's Disciple is another melodrama, deftly 
securing by inversion of melodramatic principles the 



196 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

thrill of the real thing. Here is all the material of the 
heroic play. A brave man takes the place of another 
in danger. The bad man shows the good streak, the 
beneficiary refuses to accept the gift and goes forth for 
succor; there is a providential escape from death at 
the last moment, — all these expedients and more are 
present, but they are treated in a way that throws 
light on Shaw's theories of literary psychology and par- 
ticularly on his theories of goodness. The DeviVs Dis- 
ciple might as well be called You Never Can Tell, as 
indeed might most of his plays. You never can tell 
what motives may govern men and women in their deeds. 
They may be the motives that the world of books has 
taught us are the acceptable ones. They may be and 
probably are other motives. As a guide to these mo- 
tives Shaw is much more disposed to trust the Devil 
than any of the more approved deities, as he shows in 
Blanco Posnet and the Scene in Hell in Man and Super- 
man as well as in The Devil's Disciple. 

Captain Brasshound's Conversion is another comic 
opera play with Gilbertian story but no lyrics. Its 
stage settings are Moroccan. Its characters are 
English, an army officer, a nephew turned brigand, a 
London Cockney for relief, native chiefs and pirates 
and a leading woman of unbroken sheen of exterior. 
By no standard are any of the characters or actions 
true save by the standard we apply to The Pirates of 
Penzance. In his early plays much had come from 
Shaw's desire to set things straight. Now much comes 
from his desire to set things crooked. It is impossible 
to believe that there is anything but trickery and good 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 197 

spirits in this play. Through the action appear snatches 
of imperiahsm, KipUngism, manifest destiny, the doc- 
trine of the dominant race. The part of Lady Cicely 
Wayneflete provided Ellen Terry one of her most 
charming roles. 

With Captain Brassbound's Conversion Shaw comes 
to the end of his first phase. In the plays of this 
period he seemed always to have an eye out for a con- 
vention that he could smash. Much as he violates 
many of the requirements of the manager he writes the 
plays as if for production. After this play he seems 
to change his attitude toward the play. He now 
treats it more as a printed document and makes fewer 
efforts to adapt himself to the demands of the stage. 
His speeches become longer and the plays more diffuse. 
The play now becomes a discussion play, almost 
completely giving up any attempt at a realistic inter- 
pretation of life. It is fantastic, often rather mad, 
in its arrangements. Its value lies in the uncovering 
of mental issues rather than in truth to external ap- 
pearances. In Shaw's early plays there had been some 
contact with flesh and blood reality. In his later ones 
no one would look for the actions of the world. The 
actions are generalized into a world of free agents in 
which every one does and speaks according to princi- 
ples that will most clearly evoke a hard and glittering 
sense of truth. 

These characteristics come to a height in Man and 
Superman, The play is too long for performance by 
the length of a very talky third act. That the play is 
a revolt against conventional systems of romance goes 



198 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

without saying. It is far more than this, and our sym- 
pathies for it, our ability to accept it, depend upon our 
abihty to translate ourselves into a world almost free 
from the control of traditions. The only fault with 
Ann and John is that they are too true to live. They 
are in fact the truest figures in recent writing in that 
they most achieve the spirit of self-directing intelli- 
gence. The only others to compare with them are 
Philip and Jessica in Barker's The Madras House. To 
justify such epitomes of the time as these two we have 
to imagine a super-logical world almost as regular as 
that of farce. Far more true to the muddling, deluded 
world is Ricky, just as you will find more Hucksta- 
bles and E. P. States than Constantines and Philips. 
Violet also is an easier figure to understand, for she is 
simply a, reaction against the idea of the wronged 
woman. Ann and John are too much the products of 
the author's conception to be reactions against anything. 
Let no one think this is not a drama because the 
author presses his theme beyond human nature. In 
the handling of the chief characters there is more than 
sportiveness. Ann's struggle goes down to the deepest 
sources of drama. It would be hard to find in the 
theatre an equivalent for Ann's struggle to fulfill the 
law of her being, her struggle for the right to project her 
life at the expense of the freedom of a man and her oa^ti 
journey into the valley of the shadow. Heretofore the 
dramatic has been concerned with the sense of death. 
This is a drama of the persistent forces of life. And 
John's struggle and surrender are no less dramatic. 
He too must accept the law. Properly Shaw has 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 199 

couched his theme in flashing words and ideas that 
conceal deep springs, but one reads hghtly if he sees 
only farce in Man and Superman, or the fantastic in the 
uncovering of great new areas of struggle in old human 
nature. 

This note of the intense passion of an unfolding world 
has something akin to tragedy in it. The sense of the 
catharsis of tragedy that one gets from Maeterlinck's 
scene of the unborn in The Blue Bird is found not 
seldom in Shaw's work. Candida, Man and Superman, 
The Doctor's Dilemma, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, 
Androcles and the Lion, Pygmalion uncover deep places 
in a becoming world. The laws of such drama have 
not yet been worked out. There is something of trag- 
edy in it, the tragedy not of endings and surrenders but 
of processes, of the unfulfilled, the tragedy of the wait- 
ing factor in a large and inscrutable and inevitable plan. 
No one so well reveals this in an appropriate medium 
as does Shaw. Tchekhov has not the mood. Andreyev 
has not the medium. Barker thins it down until it 
loses force. But these are the only ones who seize on 
the poignant values of growth, the tragedy of the corn 
that comes before the full ear. 

This strain is in many of Shaw's plays, but not de- 
veloped. It is the dramatic motive under a chaos of 
conversation by which responsible people are trying to 
arrive at truth. After Man and Superman Shaw 
seemed disposed to take more particular questions and 
treat them particularly. In John Bull's Other Island, 
written for the Irish theatre but too large a structure 
for this little stage, we have another discussion play 



200 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

treating in much witty dialogue one of the liveliest 
problems in the policy of John Bull. Though an Irish- 
man, Shaw has never been one to take a sentimental 
attitude toward Ireland. In John Bull's Other Island 
the author treats Ireland with the wit of an Irishman 
and from the general vantage ground of a citizen of 
the British Empire, He is as far as possible from the 
Ireland that is represented by Cathleen ni Houlihan. 
But he never takes sides. It is a continual battledore 
and shuttlecock between Broadbent and Doyle, the 
English and Irish members of the firm. And Shaw 
matches the often-expressed truth that Ireland is good 
for England, with the idea that without England to 
keep it alive the much vaunted Irish spirit would 
dwindle and die. 

How He Lied to Her Husband is a little bit in which 
Shaw subjects his own legend to the scrutiny he had 
before used on Napoleon and Cajsar. It stands in 
the same class as Fanny's First Play as a "cooling 
card ", not for himself but for his idolators. 

In Major Barbara (1905) Shaw discusses more ex- 
plicitly the problems of force and warfare that he had 
touched in Arms and the Man. Here the discussion re- 
fers away from the practice of arms itself to the social 
psychology that goes into the training of the fighting 
arm of a nation. In a day when democracy is teach- 
ing more and more the disparity between spiritual 
ideals and brute facts, what shall be the attitude to- 
ward munitions of war and their commercial exploita- 
tion? More, how shall we conserve stamina in men 
while teaching them charity? And how shall we 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 201 

adapt the militant ideal of the other cheek as expressed 
in the Salvation Army with the militant ideal of the 
first blow ? In such a consideration as this the nature 
and perpetuity of the State are clearly involved. 
Shaw takes these questions up again in a historic set- 
ting in Androcles and the Lion. 

Getting Married (1908) is another play of pure dis- 
cussion. The play is altogether scattered in action 
and in speech. The author was able to find no cen- 
ters around which to involve separate acts, so he writes 
the play in a unit without entr'actes. But there is 
something impudent in the suggestion in the preface 
that he is returning to the Greek ideal in a play that 
lives no life in the mind and has no beauty of form. 
The unreal situations are invented simply in order to 
display a catalogue of the faults of marriage. With 
this play is to be mentioned Misalliance, which even 
the audiences at the Duke of York's could not 
admire. 

The Sheimng-up of Blanco Posnet (1909) is called "A 
Sermon in Crude Melodrama." The idea is to be re- 
ferred to the same source as The Devil's Disciple. It 
is one of Shaw's most effective stage plays, and the 
only play in which the action as such is made to 
serve a symbolic purpose after the style of Ibsen's prose 
plays. In The Doctor's Dilemma we again see an 
attempt to heighten the value of action. But Shaw 
cannot handle a plot of action, so the episodes of this 
play serve only to confuse a theme in which there 
are several substantial motives. Behind the badly 
handled action there is the theme of the "right to life" 



202 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

treated heroically. The stage had had its fill of plays 
defending the rights of the individual. But if there is 
an obligation to selection in birth there is a limitation 
to the duty of continuing life. With this theme there 
is combined the theme of artist versus mother-woman 
that Shaw had treated before. The play is almost 
invalidated by the animus shown against doctors, 
and in a lesser degree, against newspaper men, but in 
spite of its faults, the scene of the death of the artist 
is one of an astounding force. 

In Fanny's First Play (1911) the author steps aside 
from his prepossessions and gives us a play about the 
stage. This is Shaw's most successful play. It has the 
Shaw attitude suflSciently thinned for the crowd, it 
introduces the critics, — who have been very useful 
to Shaw in his career, — it shows a play in process, 
and it provides a characteristic little Shaw play with 
a full quota of characters, attitudes, and witticisms. 
With all its popularity, it is one of his least valuable 
plays. Shaw is one man who should not repeat 
himself. 

For five years Shaw had seemed to be in the dol- 
drums. Blanco Posnet and The Doctor's Dilemma had 
revealed faults we had no reason to expect from the 
mature Shaw. Fanny's First Play had treated second- 
hand materials, and Press Cuttings and The Dark Lady 
of the Sonnets were but trifles. But in his next two 
plays Shaw found himself again. Androcles and the 
Lion (1912) combines the corrective method of the 
history plays with the theme of Major Barbara. Shaw 
strips away the historic illusions from both the early 



GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 203 

Christians and their persecutors, the Romans. Some 
call this play the Gospel of Peace. It seems as well 
to represent the Gospel of War. The most beautiful 
thing in the play, an achievement of the first magni- 
tude, is the figure of the Lion. 

Pygmalion represents not only the statue come to 
life through power of the artist's fervor of creation. 
It shows the next step in human responsibility after 
the doctrine of eugenics has been accepted. And 
this responsibility cannot be taken lightly. Pygmalion 
is a treatise on education. The scientist is to-day cre- 
ating new life. There is still to be asked whether he 
has a house in which to put it. While tinkering away 
on cockneys, on the illiterate, giving them speech 
beyond their station, providing them half-baked ideas, 
have we been making room for them in the world for 
which we have been training them? This searching 
question stands at the end of Shaw's list of plays for 
the present. 

Shaw the 'thinker must ever take precedence over 
Shaw the dramatist. Yet what he might have been 
as dramatist had he possessed more skill in handling 
action, is sufiiciently revealed in some of his scenes of 
pure magic. Several moving scenes in Cwsar and 
Cleopatra, the death scene of the artist in The Doctor's 
Dilemma, the delightful turns of incident in The Devil's 
Disciple, Marchbanks's victory in Candida, the whole 
conception of the Lion and Androcles and the strong 
man in Androcles and the Lion, the regenerated flower 
girl turning for love to her creators in Pygmalion, 
Tanner's surrender to the Life Force in Man and 



204 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Superman, Blanco Posnet talking with God — for old- 
fashioned dramatic appeal these take a place second 
to nothing in English prose drama, and they are con- 
cealed in so much that is new-fashioned that one is 
likely to lose one magic in another. 



CHAPTER XI 

Dramatists of the Free Theatre 

AsroE from the work of two or three dramatists the 
annals of the drama of the first fifteen years of the 
twentieth century are written in the records of the new 
theatre organizations. The serious work that had 
been done by the pioneers and rebuilders had come to 
its fruition. Experimental theatre organizations had 
been provided. Though these as a rule lasted only a 
short time, they drew to themselves the most energetic 
workers, the playwrights of greatest sincerity. More 
than this, they showed the development of a clearly 
marked division among theatre audiences. With 
the coming of new organizations theatres came to 
be classed as majority and minority theatres. The 
majority theatre continues the traditions of the nine- 
teenth century in types of plays and in business organi- 
zation. It constitutes the place of amusement of the 
great numbers of English playgoers. But most of 
its plays are overlooked in a serious consideration of 
the output of the period. Opposed to the majority 
theatre the minority theatre busies itself in construct- 
ing new regulations in production and in playwriting. 

205 



206 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

It attaches to itself a small audience of increasing 
critical skill and fidelity to its interests. And it has 
taught criticism to look to it for stimulating new ideas. 
This theatre may well be called the Free Theatre, to 
distinguish it from the commercial theatre and to asso- 
ciate it with theatres of like spirit on the Continent. 

One would expect an institution of this nature to 
exercise an influence over the kind of plays produced. 
This has been the case in a measure far out of pro- 
portion to the strength of the theatre in numbers or 
in critical acumen. There has developed a clearly- 
marked school of plays for the free theatre in England. 
The first demand of this theatre is that its plays be 
judged as art as distinguished from entertainment. 
All the plays of the free theatre have been marked 
by genuineness of substance and an artistic intent in 
composition. In all of them there has been a definite 
demand for truth in the execution of the work, a fidelity 
to life and to principles of form. Whatever the type 
of play, whether problem, fantastic, or discussion 
play, the first demand has been for the satisfaction 
of rigorous standards. This insistence upon standards 
has brought into the service of the free English theatre 
many men of ideals who have served the new theatre 
with vision and unselfish devotion. The influence 
has not only applied to the composition of plays. In 
these theatres have been created companies the like 
of which has not been seen in England for years. 
In spite of defections from the ranks there has been 
developed an ensemble standard of prodliction. In 
staging the same influence has been felt. Not the 



DRAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 207 

least important result of this system has been the 
creation of a new art, the art of the director of pro- 
duction. 

There has also been a healthy change in the temper 
and attitude of public discussion on the play. Culti- 
vated people are beginning to be cultivated in the 
theatre — by no means heretofore a thing to be as- 
sumed. Instead of concerning itself with the moral 
values of the theatre, and the vague obligation for 
the people to "do something", discussion has come 
to concern the critical and artistic elements of a pro- 
duction. This is because worthy productions are 
becoming more common and taste is becoming some- 
what more expert. Always pertinent. Max Beer- 
bohm's statement that the people always support a 
thing for moral reasons, and never for aesthetic reasons, 
is tending to require some modification as a larger 
critical public develops. 

Along with the change in temper that has risen from 
the minority theatre there has been a change in the 
type of man who writes for the stage and in the atti- 
tude he takes toward it. The history of the theatre 
of the last twenty years has been a history of outsiders, 
Shaw has never been a success on the professional 
stage. Even Granville Barker, the most practical 
of all the new workers, was tutored in stage societies. 
Instead of looking for the plays of this theatre to men 
who have educated themselves only in the theatre, 
we see that the best contributions are now made by 
men who have educated themselves in other arts. 
Heretofore the novelist, who of all men may be pre- 



208 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

sumed to have sent himself to school to the world, has 
been discouraged from writing for the stage on account 
of the supposed technical dijfficulties of the craft. 
He has now discovered that these diflBculties are 
largely imaginary, that there is hardly a gift that 
one learns in the world that cannot be put to use on 
the stage. So there has been a great increase in the 
number of novelists who write for the stage. Meredith 
often spoke of the desire to see his works fitly put 
forth in the theatre, but had no time to make the at- 
tempt. But after him Barrie, Bennett, Galsworthy 
become ambidextrous. 

There has been a change in the mood of the drama- 
tists. Now having a machine of production upon 
which they can depend, their work is no longer ham- 
pered with the doubts and the uncertainties that so 
distracted the writer of the Victorian era. This sense 
of security has done much to give poise to plays, to 
render compromise unnecessary, to permit free flow 
of imagination and technical experiment. It has 
also made drama more joyous. It would be inter- 
esting to inquire how much of the bitterness and 
misanthropy of the early realists arose from discon- 
tent at the limitations of their medium. Certainly 
while fighting falsehood in the world Ibsen was 
quite as vigorously fighting it in the theatre. From 
such moods the recent English playwright has been 
relieved. 

One would expect that with all these facilities pro- 
vided ready to their hands there would have been no 
dearth of great plays for the theatre. There can in- 



DRAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 209 

deed be no complaint of the skill, the command of 
truth, the delicacy, the social serviceableness of the 
new plays. The English stage has seldom within a 
like period been provided with so considerable a body 
of adequate plays. And yet as one surveys the list, 
the conclusion is one of disappointment. The plays of 
the free theatre possess every attribute of great work 
save the attribute of great imagination. In freeing 
themselves of the controls of a technique of artijfice 
the dramatists had forged a chain no less strong. 
The rational canons of objective truth, continually 
checked by reference to the laws of psychology and 
by suspicion of the validity of fancy and emotion, 
made good critical principles no doubt, but they did 
not foster living works of imagination. The result 
was to make exact but little plays, to limit the moving 
source of the play to the scientifically demonstrable. 
The plays of the minority theatre almost all follow the 
codes of rationalism. They are expert, well turned; 
they ring true, but they are little. Very few of 
them have any vitality except that of thought. Their 
significance extends no further than the action of the 
play itself. England had been asking for bread, and 
while they did not give her a stone, they did give her 
a piece of well-made concrete. 

In these plays the social motive is retained from the 
preceding age in the same manner as this age had 
clung to the romantic motive. And, like the romantic 
motive, the social motive had lost its vitality for art. 
When it had first come into plays it appeared with all 
the passion of rebellion. It was fraught with enthusi- 



210 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

asms; it contained enough of danger to give it in- 
tensity. But now the motive of social justice, of the 
war of the classes, has lost force because it is no longer 
an issue for art. Though not realized in life its issues 
have been accepted in men's thinking. The spirit of 
revolt has now been subjected to reasonable observa- 
tion, and this too has quieted its fever. Though these 
motives are out of date the dramatists of the little 
theatres, with few exceptions, have clung to the old 
formulas, and dissected to a needle point the old prob- 
lems. Galsworthy and St. John Hankin and Stanley 
Houghton would have been surprised if they )iad 
been told that they were raking over old papers. Yet 
in their art they were neglecting the first demand of 
all true art, that it search out unseen values, that it 
experiment in the revelation of hidden truth. Para- 
doxical as it may seem, the theatre that was itself 
built upon a doctrine of experiment encouraged a 
group of safe and sane "academic" playwrights. The 
theatre that was rooted in individualism flowered in 
schools. 

In an effort to adapt the old formula to new uses 
there comes a group of cynical plays dedicated to the 
rights of the individual. These plays were based upon 
the same formula as had been used so effectively by 
Turgenev in Fathers and Sons, the story of the struggle 
between generations for the ideals of each. But that 
struggle differs as between the mid-nineteenth cen- 
tury and the twentieth century. In Turgenev it 
was a struggle between the old order and the new order 
of social idealism. The old order was being destroyed 



DRAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 211 

under the force of a moral passion for the service of 
men, the sounding of the evangel of humanity. There 
was tragedy, but it was sweetened by the promise that 
underlay the pain of change. The new play continues 
the formula of the old struggle. But the struggle has 
lost vitality because it is no longer directed by love of 
humanity. It is now a struggle for the petty rights 
of an individual. It deals either with the right to 
individual joy, or the effort to adapt the moral revolt 
of a period of idealism to the cold systems of new busi- 
ness. Under such conditions there is no wonder that 
technique changed and shrunk. There was no longer 
fire in the theme. So the play itself became struc- 
turally meticulous, cold and intellectualistic. Drama 
can hardly go further in this direction than The Voysey 
Inheritance, Milestones, Rutherford and Son go in the 
treatment of business psychology, and than Hindle 
Wakes, The Younger Generation, The Eldest Son or 
The Last of the DeMullins go in the defense of the right 
to life. 

Part of this appearance of a studied exactness comes 
from the fact that the writers of the free theatres were 
keeping themselves aware of the latest developments 
on the Continent. A continental education was pre- 
requisite to success in this theatre. All knew Ibsen, 
but his influence was past. Few dared to write in 
his manner. The continental types that were most 
followed belonged to that new genre serieux that had 
come in with the end of the century. A hundred 
years after Diderot, the genre which he had introduced 
had come to form in the successors of Augier. Becque 



212 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

had introduced to the stage the chaotic substance of 
society itself, a Httle embittered with his view of Ufe. 
His followers had infused method into the serious 
study of the phenomena of society. Brieux had sup- 
plied the laboratory system whereby social phenomena 
are tried out on the stage. His interest was not in 
characters but in their actions under his tests. His 
method may be called the deductive method. And 
Hervieu, among others, had used the inductive method. 
He had been interested first in the law and had studied 
men and women as agents and exemplars of the law. 
It was to the works of such men as these that the Eng- 
lish dramatist looked for the laws of his playwriting. 

Among the dramatists of the free theatre John 
Galsworthy (born 1867) first demands attention. Next 
to Shaw in popularity, Galsworthy is noteworthy for 
the command he has attained in the novel and the 
play. Galsworthy came to the composition of plays 
with a social doctrine fully developed in his practice 
of the novel. It is said that as a novelist Galsworthy 
had been rather strongly influenced by Turgenev. He 
showed in his novels a strong sense of social obliga- 
tion couched in severely poised construction and re- 
strained language. In other words, he was a thorough 
social idealist and a thorough artist as well. His 
work revealed the melancholy of the Slav, and the 
characteristic vigor of the Briton. 

Galsworthy did not transfer to the art of the theatre 
the temper he had displayed as a novelist. When he 
came to write plays he added to the characteristics 
of a Turgenev the technical outlook of a Brieux. He 



DRAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 213 

undertook playwriting as no artistic enterprise but as 
an opportunity in propaganda. Given a set of opin- 
ions to express, drama provided him a more immediate 
and emphatic mode of expression than any other art. 
With him a play is a studious documenting of a social 
case without partisanship and without heat. The 
many difficulties of this style of playwriting Galsworthy 
overcame at a bound. He surrendered to none of the 
temptations to make his play conventionally dramatic. 
Galsworthy possesses in a remarkable degree the 
ability to discover the dramatic in natural and un- 
forced situations. In order to secure a moving climax 
he does not, as Pinero sometimes does, develop false 
themes, or with Jones make himself a violent partisan, 
or like Shaw conceal hard thinking under verbal dis- 
play. His plays have the surface and texture of care- 
fully molded reality. And yet as a playwright he 
pays the price for this constructive eflBciency. His 
plays are too severely, too nakedly architectured. 
He seldom gives the extra line that presents the 
contour of life. In Galsworthy one does not find 
that unnecessary grace that is the genius of the 
creator. His wisdom never overflows in prodigality. 
His plays are all necessarily good, — never unneces- 
sarily good. His dialogue is crisp and human with 
all the cadences of speech. As a dramatic crafts- 
man he stands in the first rank beside Pinero in every- 
thing but Pinero's occasional gifts of the magician. 
Of his characters not so much can be said. They 
are all ready to walk when some one breathes the 
breath of life into them. But they do not walk. His 



214 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

mechanical and mental adequacy is the measure of 
Galsworthy's first position in the second rank of Eng- 
lish playwrights. As Galsworthy proceeds as a play- 
wright, the traits above enumerated have led to a 
change in his drama from a thing of men to a thing of 
impersonal forces. 

Galsworthy avows his belief in the moral function 
of the play. The drama, he says, must have a spice 
of meaning. "Every grouping of life and character 
has its inherent moral ; and the business of the drama- 
tist is so to pose the group as to bring the moral poign- 
antly to the light of day." One may argue that 
every grouping has its moral without agreeing that 
characters should be posed for their moral. Gals- 
worthy has in several plays posed his characters, and 
this is the real charge against him. He may have 
done so in order to provide laboratory material, as in 
Strife, or in order to make a particular plea as in Justice 
and The Mob. All of these represent reality manip- 
ulated for the sake of the didactic or the expository 
motive. To this extent they represent a motive alien 
to truth. 

The characteristics of this author are revealed at 
their best in his first play. The Silver Box (1906). In 
this play Galsworthy had so well mastered his art 
as to disguise the construction. Nothing Galsworthy 
has done in the theatre has equaled this play for 
dexterity in story telling and in infusing the moral. 
Two merits are notable. One is the dexterity in in- 
volving the fortunes of the two classes. The other 
is the ability to give an impression of the "surfaces" 



DRAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 215 

of life. His grouping of events, his pregnant action, 
his silent spaces, his shifts of interest display the hand 
of a master. 

Like The Silver Box, Galsworthy's next play, Joy, 
has a complex and realized life. It is quite without 
social intentions, depending upon a personal theme of 
unusual richness of imagination. Taking a theme 
that other dramatists have spoiled, the relation of a 
mother and daughter, — both young, — to each other 
and to love, Galsworthy treats, it with beauty and 
without moral compromise. 

With Strife (1909) Galsworthy comes to the fork 
of the roads. The social idealism we have spoken of 
continues in him. There continues too the demand 
for poise, for suspended judgment. But this has 
become now an intellectual admonition rather than 
an admonition of art. He is very careful not to over- 
state a case, not to do injustice to any side. The 
construction becomes diagrammatic, governed by the 
necessities of his review. The characters are posed 
with care. They bring out the moral. But they do 
so at the expense of the human graces. One feels 
that never was this group called together for any other 
purpose than the making of a social survey. The 
play is not a depiction of any one strike. It is not a 
depiction of strikes in general. It is a Morality on 
Strife. 

A like criticism may be made of Justice (1910). 
The title indicates the author's purpose. He would 
attack the great theme of justice with the little instru- 
ment of a realistic play. One is torn between admira- 



216 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

tion of the superbly achieved "surfaces" of this play, 
its economy of suggestion, and perplexity at its manipu- 
lated plot. It is as hard for the author to bring Falder 
to death as it was for Pinero to bring Zoe to death 
in Mid-Channel. But while Pinero lays no blame, 
Galsworthy points the accusing finger. Death comes 
by a medley of circumstances which no human system 
could stretch itself to foresee. All that was necessary 
to avoid the outcome was the intrusion of one man 
into the system. It is hard to conceive that that man 
would not have intruded himself. Galsworthy cannot 
justify such a general title as Justice for this play. 
The play should have been called William Falder. 

The later plays of Galsworthy are marked by an 
increased baldness of planning, abstractness in char- 
acterization, and disparity between plot and theme. 
Aside from The Pigeon, a little fantasy on serious- 
mindedness in charity, and The Little Dream, a slight 
fairy play, his plays are all vehicles of messages to his 
time. In The Eldest Son (1912), The Fugitive (1913), 
The Mob (1914), he returns to his method of bones 
without flesh. The Eldest Son is to be compared with 
Houghton's Ilindle Wakes. The Mob is an ugly 
piece of irony, as misanthropic as anything that has 
been written in a long time. The Fugitive gives us 
no improvement on the unhappy women of Pinero 
and Jones. 

John Masefield has written few plays, and he is to 
be noticed here for only one of these and for the theory 
of tragedy that he outlined to accompany this play. 
Masefield is first a poet who discovered beauty and 



DRAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 217 

faith in a body of ugliness and doubt. In The Ever- 
lasting Mercy and The Widow in the Bye Street he taught 
us that under the materials of realism there may lie a 
vision of universal truth. He would not have existed 
without the realists. Yet he adds to the observation 
of the realist the capacity for emotion of the idealist. 
In The Tragedy of Nan (1908) Masefield has harmonized 
the point of view of old tragedy with modern circum- 
stance. This is one play of the new theatre that is 
not a little play. Nan is a majestic figure. Her 
tragedy glorifies her sordid fate. 

"Tragedy at its best is a vision of the heart of life. 
The heart of life can only be laid bare in the' agony 
and exaltation of dreadful acts. The vision of agony, 
of spiritual contest, pushed beyond the limits of dying 
personality, is exalting and cleansing. It is only by 
such vision that a multitude can be brought to the 
passionate knowledge of things exalting and eternal." 

In these words Masefield gives the modern state- 
ment of the ancient theory of tragedy. Tragedy is 
still a matter not of its story or its struggles. It is 
not made tragedy by the greatness of the contest or 
the greatness of the fall. It is tragedy only when the 
concrete facts of an unhappy state are magnified to 
a universal and quieting significance, when they live 
beyond themselves in a purer ether. To the classic 
idea of catharsis there is added now the demand that 
this cleansing conduce to more knowledge of eternal 
things on the part of the race. Darwin has been added 
to Aristotle. Social morality has been added to indi- 
vidual morality. Tragedy must search the vision of 



218 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

the heart of Ufe in order to elevate its reality. This 
The Tragedy of Nan does. The substance of the 
play is one with the substance of life. But the spirit 
of the play elevates the substance to Tragedy. 

A dignified product of the free theatre, a man who 
benefited from it in a certain solidity and finish of 
his plays, yet still failed of absolute achievement was 
St. John Hankin (1860-1909). Hankin combines in his 
art two strains. He takes the substance of the realistic 
and didactic play of social groups and treats it by a 
method derived from a study of comedy of manners. 
He desired to be heard as a comedian, but he lacked 
the nonchalance of true comedy. He was a studious 
Oscar Wilde. Hankin brought to the theatre a full 
set of theories as to playwriting gained by the study 
of models and inquiry into the temper of the time. He 
was the first among the naturalistic dramatists to 
treat social facts absolutely without a drag. Tradi- 
tion meant to him only the means whereby he could 
learn to tell his story. And tradition of convention 
meant nothing to him either to fight or to accept. 
His mental machinery seems to be quite free from a 
personal coloring. One wonders at the adequacy of 
his plays without admiring them. They have wit 
but no comedy flavor. They tell stories of ladies and 
gentlemen whom we respect without desiring to meet. 
Perhaps no writer of the time has left so little a trace 
of himself in his plays. 

Hankin's plays cover all kinds of topics within the 
circle of polite interest. Goodness and badness, the 
rights of women, social control, the problems of mar- 



DKAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 219 

riage and business are discreetly interpreted. They 
touch the deeper places not at the center of the plot 
but at some point or points in the periphery. In The 
Two Mr. Wetherbys, The Charity that Began at Home, 
The Last of the DeMullins, The Cassilis Engagement, 
we see the scholastic method of playwriting reaching 
its conclusion. Hankin's comedies display all the 
controls of sanity and common sense. They are wary. 
They hang upon none of the illusions. The characters 
are genteel, of good breeding, emancipated or so near 
it that they can handle the vocabulary of the enfran- 
chised. One finds himself wishing that some of the 
new illusions of sophistication might be exchanged 
for some of the older illusions. There are two things 
only that can vitalize a work of art, a faith, or a cause. 
The first works constructively. The second works 
destructively. But in the dry zone beyond belief 
and enthusiasm art cannot dwell. 

What has been said for Hankin may also apply 
to Stanley Houghton (1881-1914). Extravagantly 
hailed for a time, the perspective of months is 
enough to place him as little more than a competent 
workman. Houghton is a Hankin without comedy. 
Belonging to the Midland group of writers, his work 
lacks the refinements of manners. Hindle Wakes 
organizes the "new morality", or unmorality, into a 
technical code. The right to joy is no longer a burn- 
ing issue. It is a presumption. Far more real than 
Galsworthy's The Eldest Son, it reflects in the temper 
of the play itself the flattening of moral intensity. It 
is well done in that it is laconic and commonplace. 



220 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

But it is a perfect example of the "little play." It is 
neither ugly nor beautiful. The play represents the 
step beyond which it is impossible to go in art, in that 
it introduces whim and pleasure as guides in the great 
decisions of life. Without calling upon passion or 
jealousy or the demand for self-realization, it shows 
a slangy youngster having "her little fancy." The 
story of such a play could be told in ten words as well 
as in three acts. 

Set apart from other writers of the free theatre by a 
finished artistry and a resolute morality is Granville 
Barker (1877- ). As moral as Galsworthy, Barker 
excels the latter in a searching artistry, in making excur- 
sions into new zones of the spirit. Indeed, it may be 
said that Barker is the only man in England who, using 
the methods of close naturalism, has pressed forward 
the boundaries of art. Barker is like Shaw in liking 
discussion, in feeling that ideas are among the most 
important things in the world. But he is unlike Shaw 
in being an artist. Aside from his gift of a quick and 
understanding mind, Barker's chief virtue lies in his 
skill as a designer. His plots are all beautifully planned 
and etched. No one has equaled him for the ability 
to apply the principles of the abstruse arts of painting 
and music to the making of a play of ideas. The skill 
he shows in providing new mediums of expression in 
the production of plays has served him in the handling 
of his own themes. His plays are models of form 
built of elements articulated like a symphony. 

All this artistry Barker applies to a substance not 
unlike Shaw's. He takes as his themes the topics 



DRAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 221 

of intellectualism, the social, political, or sex interests 
of men and women. But he treats the mental lives 
of men and women at their purest and best. He 
selects those moments which are beyond speech, 
which lie in the region of the veiled suggestion, the 
broken meaning. He is like Shaw in that his char- 
acters live in their minds and the play is made of 
mental emanations. He is unlike Shaw in that he 
makes room for only the salient thought, the revealing 
symbol. The result of these things is a certain sil- 
houette quality in Barker's characters, a lack of vitality 
in his treatment of themes. His themes are among 
the most vital on earth, but he treats them in a vac- 
uum. He makes no appeal to mood as detached 
from thought, as does Tchekhov. His plays are like 
reminiscences of passionate things after emotion has 
cooled, or they are aloof and cynical. 

Barker started his career at twenty-two with one of 
his most interesting plays. The Marrying of Ann Leete. 
Here was a play with barely a sentence of narrative. 
Hardly one speech made definite reply to the last. 
All was as disjointed as the conversation of a well- 
bred group overheard from a balcony. The play is 
a nocturne, opening with voices joined in scattered 
speech in the dark. In this fashion the whole play 
builds itself up by divination. And yet there is in it 
a profound grouping of characters. Best of these is 
Ann, a daughter of the nineteenth century, who deter- 
mines that she will not sell herself to keep alive a system 
that is moribund. She will use her healthy young life 
in a conscious devotion, an offering to the cause of a 



222 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

healthy world. There are scenes of surpassing poign- 
ancy in the work. The scene in which the knowledge 
of sex comes to Ann as a thing to be faced and not to 
be ashamed of, and the scene in which having made 
her decision to marry the gardener the two stand in the 
cottage and listen for the call of their children, measm-e 
high in English drama. 

Barker has always held to the moral imperatives 
of character, as these are applied to the new problegas 
of the world. In two plays of solid workmanship 
he studies the expressions of these imperatives as they 
apply to modern business and to matters of sex. The 
first, The Voysey Inheritance (1905), is a study of the 
many-sided face of honor. As a study of the family 
and the power of money to sap the conscience the play 
is to be compared with Pinero's The Thunderbolt, which 
it precedes. It is the best English comedy of business, 
though theatrically not the equal of Pinero's play. 
Waste is a realistic tragedy lived in the zones of the 
mind. The moral of the play is not that sex is waste, 
but that we have not yet functioned to sex. 

The Madras House (1910) is the climax of Barker's 
symphonic method. The play covers in good-natured 
speech the problem he touched in the tragedy of 
Waste. In his effort to represent the "woman" ques- 
tion fairly Barker gives an idealized cross-section of 
society in such a way as to show it to be not a woman 
question but a human question. He shows many 
groups of women against a background of modern busi- 
ness. The first is the group of the Huxtable sisters, 
a cluster of grapes hanging on the family vine, waiting 



DRAMATISTS OF THE FREE THEATRE 223 

to be plucked. The next class is composed of those 
who hve in the barracks of industry. These are 
shown to be of both sexes. The third broad class of 
women is represented by the manikins who display 
costumes in the establishment of The Madras House. 
This group politely represents that class of women who 
live by their sex. Other women are shown, — Miss 
Yates who follows her impulses, Mrs. Brigstock who 
marries on insufficient income, Mrs. Constantine 
Madras, a "discarded" and complaining woman, 
Miss Chancellor, a demon of Virtue, and last Jessica 
— " the most wonderful achievement of civilization, 
and worth the cost of her breeding, worth the toil and 
the helotage of — all the others." Different kinds 
of men are shown as well, from Tommy, the "mean 
sensual man", through E. P. State, the romanticist, 
and Philip, the monk of the intellect, to the haughty 
Mohammedanism of Constantine. Nothing more is 
needed than this list of characters to show the theme 
of the play. Plot there is none. It was the author's 
purpose to show a mental epitome of modern society. 
The result is a fabric of remarkable compression and 
suggestiveness. The play often rises to comedy and, 
at the end, in the well-bred but sincere speech of Philip 
and Jessica, achieves beauty. 

In addition to these works Barker has adapted 
Schnitzler's Anatol into English and aided Laurence 
Housman in the composition of Prunella. The artistry 
of intellectualism will hardly go beyond Barker. He 
has sensitiveness, restraint, knowledge of the soul of 
the time, and remarkable mastery of design. His 



■4% 



224 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

plays have that most difficult thing, idea vitalized with 
sensation. But he has refined this type to sterility. 

The work of other men and women can only be 
touched. Much of it has come from the provinces, 
standing, with the Irish plays, as the effective dramati- 
zation of little themes for selected audiences. Eliza- 
beth Baker's Chains (Duke of York's, 1909) is a very 
adroit study of the forces that make up middle-class 
life. The story is not drawn to a focus, there is no plot, 
but the pressure of events on narrow lives has seldom 
been better presented. 

Githa Sowerby's Rutherford and Son (Court Theatre, 
1912) has a little of the Norwegian note of gloom. It 
deals with a middle-class business family in a story 
involving business honor and with the strong note of 
Strife. Charles McEvoy's David Ballard (Manchester, 
1907) is a realistic melodrama in a domestic circle. 
To a like class belong some careful studies by Gilbert 
Cannan and S. M. Fox. 

From Wales there came in 1913 Change by J. O. 
Francis, a study of the struggles of fathers and sons 
in primitive environment. Of a comedy order is 
Moffat's Bunty Pulls the Strings (1911) that came from 
Scotland to the Playhouse and was then transferred 
for a successful run to the Haymarket. Harold Chapin 
of the Manchester Theatre had to his credit several 
promising light plays when he gave up his life fighting 
before Loos. All these writers display the qualities 
suggested at the opening of this chapter. By 1914 the 
writers for the English minority theatres had reached 
the point at which they were waiting for the next stage. 



CHAPTER XII 
The Challenge op the Futuke 

In this book we have sketched the history of the Eng- 
lish stage from the accession of Queen Victoria to the 
beginning of the Great War. We have seen how the 
solving of the problems of one period has led into 
the problems of the following period. No movement 
has come to full consummation. The promised golden 
age has each time receded into the distance. Each 
period has considered itself a time of preparation for 
greater dignities that were to come. And each period 
has provided its own quota of success and of failure. 

These facts have something to do with the critical 
attitude we have had to take in this book. No time 
in the whole period of our study has failed to bring 
some workers who demand praise. And few institu- 
tions even of the later periods of resolute standards 
can escape altogether from censure. We have seen 
that the minority theatre has so trained itself down as 
almost to lack stamina. Common sense tells us that 
for the next step we must look again to popular art. 
And so the period ends as others have done in that 
doubt which is Life. 

225 



226 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

As we have surveyed the history of the English 
theatre for fourscore years we have found that good 
work does not come in clusters. It has not depended 
upon groups. Amid much work that has been merely 
acceptable or has been adversely criticized several 
works have received what may seem extravagant praise. 
These are the works upon which the mind of the critic 
rests with satisfaction. By no means all of a type, 
most of these works have been in the class of imag- 
ination and comedy. Little has been said for the " well- 
made" play, the realistic play, or for the Englishman's 
attempts to put high meaning into tradesman's tragedy. 
On the other hand, such popular forms as farce, melo- 
drama, and comic opera have been gladly accepted. 
A few works have stood out once and for all. Brown- 
ing's Strafford and Colomhe's Birthday; Robertson's 
Caste; the I^tIc comedies of Gilbert; Pinero's Tre- 
lawney of the "Wells'', The Gay Lord Quex, The Thun- 
derbolt; two acts of Jones's The Masqueraders; Shaw's 
Candida, Man and Superman, Androcles and the Lion; 
all of Synge's plays except Deirdre; Yeats's The Land 
of Heart's Desire; Barker's The Marrying of Ann Leete; 
Masefield's The Tragedy of Nan; Galsworthy's The 
Silver Box; Barrie's Peter Pan and The Admirable 
Crichton, — these are a few that live in the memory. 
Many plays have received very serious consideration, 
in that the authors have made worthy efforts to con- 
tribute to the wisdom of the age. Strangely enough 
many of these sink down to minor positions. It is 
the work that has some magic in it that is remembered. 

In spite of the good work that has been done for a 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE 227 

generation in the minority playhouses, the English 
theatre of to-day presents a face of doubt. The activ- 
ities of the drama of experiment have limited them- 
selves to a narrow road. Outside this the great field 
of popular amusement has grown broader. Never 
had the theatre expanded as during these years. The 
number of music halls, cinematograph halls, variety 
halls and popular theatres has risen enormously. And 
never has the current of ordinary English drama been 
less distinguished. If we except the movements rep- 
resented by the printed play, the drama of London 
and the provinces seems to have deteriorated rather 
than improved in quality in the first fifteen years of 
the twentieth century. 

The plays of the popular theatres have been greatly 
influenced by the themes of the plays of the repertory 
theatres. This influence has not been always favor- 
able. A certain daring in the treatment of serious 
problems in the book plays has been exploited into an 
appeal to illicit interests. The methods of the realistic 
and purpose play have been copied without sincerity. 
Sex problems, problems of disease, of eugenics, of 
political and social reform have become a stock in 
trade. And when people turn from these plays they 
turn to entertainment of the lightest nature, to naughty 
farces and musical comedy of frocks and frills. The 
French play is almost completely extinguished, but the 
old-fashioned melodrama continues as a relic at Drury 
Lane. And in late years the vulgar "American" 
comedy has come in for increasing vogue. 

In the professional theatre of the first class there is 



228 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

no deterioration. But it is maintaining its position 
with increasing difficulty. George Alexander and 
Frederick Harrison stand with Sir H. Beerbohm Tree 
for high standards and good plays. They have called 
to their aid a group of enterprising and capable crafts- 
men. Their theatres continue the traditions of the 
comedy of manners of the nineties, with now and then 
a play from Shakespeare, an old English comedy, a 
new situation play, or more rarely a genteel problem 
play. To these theatres Pinero, Jones, Esmond, 
Carton, Chambers have now and then made contribu- 
tion. To these writers there have been added in the 
new century a few who continue their traditions. 
Alfred Sutro adds to the methods of the comedy of 
manners a pointed interest in social issues. Reared 
as translator in the school of symbolism, he goes back 
as writer to the patterns of the eighties. He is much 
given to strong and silent men, to exposes of the rot- 
tenness of the world of fashion. His The Walls of 
Jericho, a hollow thing, was warmly received on its 
first appearance in 1904. John Glayde's Honor is no 
better. It is pompous, a fabric of priggish attitudes. 
Sutro. is also the author of a series of artificial comedies. 
Somerset Maugham is better than Sutro because he 
does not try to be so lofty. His plays are bits of farce 
exquisitely handled to bring out the graces and fri- 
volities of society. Maugham makes no pretense to 
throw light on life. He is content if he can tell a story 
with proper taste. The best that can be said of him is 
that now and then he shows some of the playful fancy 
of Barrie. Here and there he achieves a true piece 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE 229 

of observation, a note of pathos, a discovery in hu- 
man equations. As he proceeds he shows a develop- 
ment in seriousness, an intention to be something 
more than a graceful entertainer. His list of plays 
includes A Man of Honour (1903), Lady Frederick 
(1907), Jack Straw, Mrs. Dot (1908), The Land of 
Promise (1914). 

Higher than either of these must be placed Hubert 
Henry Davies. The author of very few plays, he is 
the creator of solid comedy. He is that most unusual 
thing in the theatre, a writer of scholarly mind who 
conceals resolute thinking under flexible artistry. 
Davies has a high ideal of his work. He ponders long 
on a play and when he presents it one may be sure of 
a theme that is a contribution in social psychology and 
a treatment that bears the most careful scrutiny. His 
men and women are flesh and blood, they speak a con- 
ceivable language. His first play. Cousin Kate, is a 
quaint romance of few characters and deft workman- 
ship ; Lady Gorringe's Necklace is a situation comedy. 
His best comedy is The Mollusc, a remarkable study 
of the character of a woman. Outcast broaches a 
serious problem and rather patently avoids its conse- 
quences. 

The modern English theatre both in its popular and 
experimental branches takes its stand on comedy. 
Comedy represents the genius of the English people. 
The French have their genre serieux and vaudeville, 
the Germans have the passion for reality and mysticism, 
but the English have intellectual comedy. This is 
the front the English theatre is proud to put to the 



230 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

world. The list of English writers of comedy in the 
last thirty years is an impressive one, Gilbert, Pinero, 
Jones, Wilde, Shaw, Esmond, Chambers, Carton, 
Hankin, Barker, Maugham, Davies, and the drama- 
tists of Ireland have enriched the world with examples 
of the comic spirit. 

We have seen that cold intellectualism brings the 
dramatic impulse to a standstill. The scientific 
method in the serious play became bald didacticism 
or bad psychology. But curbed by the comic spirit, 
the theatre has given us some of the corrective agencies 
of modern thinking. One of the best expressions of 
the scientific method as applied to serious themes is 
the method of fantasy, into which form realism has 
been breaking up. As realism could not turn soft 
and sweet it distorted itself. It stretched out the 
predominant lines, it set askew the angles. It put 
laughter instead of smiles and smiles instead of tears. 
What English drama must do, says Filon, is to create a 
form which will represent the dualism of British char- 
acter. Pure idealism and pure realism are impossible. 
The answer is given in the fantastic, in which form some 
of the best work of the modern English theatre has 
been done. The nineties were fantastic. Gilbert and 
Pinero discovered their best in fancy. Meredith and 
Butler and Shaw grapple with a dualism that Matthew 
Arnold understood but could not express. And in 
Barrie fantasy achieves its height. 

The man who transplanted fantasy to its home in the 
British Isles, who made it speak English (slightly tinged 
here and there with Scotch), is J. M. Barrie. In a time 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE 23il 

in which revolt itself had become something of a con- 
vention, Barrie has been distinguished by standing 
apart from the protestants. His career itself is a 
perfect expression of the canny sense that Meredith 
ascribes to comedy and that goes with Scotch char- 
acter. Barrie is no reformer, no joiner of new groups. 
He came to the theatre only after he had made a suc- 
cess as a novelist. But unlike other men of the time 
he has been unwilling to confuse the issues of the 
theatre and the printed play. Only lately has he 
begun to issue his plays in printed form, and these 
his lesser pieces, or plays in such expensive editions as 
to gain little currency. As a dramatist he has been 
strictly a writer for the practical theatre. He has 
refused to surrender to the literary convention. His 
plays are written for production only. More than 
any dramatist since Boucicault, his plays consist of 
instructions to actors and producer, of effects of pure 
action. He follows the rule, "no speech if action will 
do; no action if silence will do." In associations 
Barrie has connected himself with the older profes- 
sional organization. He did not hesitate to put him- 
self into the hands of the chief business man of the 
English-speaking theatre, Charles Frohman. 

Barrie is no believer in the theory of art through 
hard work. By the super-serious he is often called 
facile, and in these times this is a reproach. But 
Barrie's facility is but the quality of his real grace as 
a dramatist. Barrie has more intuition into character 
than any other English playwright. There is a spir- 
itual intimacy in his work that no one else can show. 



232 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

This is the source of his charm and his understanding 
of charm. It is the source also of what some call his 
" trickiness ", his "April-weather" style, his fashion of 
combined sentiment and laughter. Certainly this is 
the source of his joy in his work. No artist in letters 
in our time is more gleeful in labors than Barrie. 
He has managed to keep the joy of work in an anxious 
time, to follow fancy while other men were following 
reason. 

Barrie has been called a reactionary. In opinions 
such he undoubtedly is. He has steadfastly refused 
to indulge in -isms and petrified ideas. He puts forth 
no formulated disquisitions on human problems. His 
chief interest is in character, but in his understanding 
of character he is even profound. He has made it his 
business to open up new nooks, to probe the whimsical 
pockets of the natures of men and women. He refuses 
to look upon men and women as mere thought- 
machines. His themes are those of sentiment and 
mood and intuition. Sometimes there is a little fem- 
inine "notion" that he expounds. And he creates his 
impressions by the most economical means. If he is 
speaking of charm he gets charm. Because of his 
gifts he is particularly apt in dealing with women, not 
as subjects of vivisection, or as exponents of the human 
unrest, but as the sisters of gentleness. And he knows 
how to deal with children. And when one comes to 
think of it, he knows how to deal with men quite as 
well. Some of his best characters are "just men." 

The secret of Barrie, if one can get at it, does not 
lie in any specialty of his in the treatment of women or 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE 233 

children. It lies in his ability completely to assimilate 
the materials of understanding and of art. He is the 
true man of genius in the simplicity of his processes. 
On this Max Beerbohm has said the best thing, " The 
man of genius is that rare creature in whom imagi- 
nation, not ousted by logic, in full growth, abides un- 
cramped, in unison with full-grown logic." And he 
says Barrie is "a child who can express through an 
artistic medium the childishness that is in him." 

The last few years have seen several uses of the child 
medium in art. The child medium has come as the 
best vestibule to the house of mystery that our skep- 
tical times will admit. The child literature of the 
last few years is something far more than literature for 
children. It is literature for grown-up men. We 
were first convinced of this in the astonishing wisdom 
of Alice in Wonderland. Kipling used children in 
Puck of Book's Hill and Rewards and Fairies in a very 
profound research. In Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird 
the childish imagination is used only as a lens through 
which older ones look. And Barrie has excelled all 
of them in Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn't grow up. 
He "has stripped off from himself the last flimsy rem- 
nants of a pretense to maturity." Peter Pan is the 
supreme achievement in imagination of the modern 
English theatre. 

Barrie's plays are based on wisps of sentiment, of 
opinion, and of character. He took sides on Ibsen as 
early as 1891 in an unsuccessful little play entitled 
Ibsen's Ghost. The Professor's Love Story (1895) and 
The Little Minister (1897) are fanciful treatments of 



234 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OP ENGLAND 

romance in which Barrie's understanding of quaint 
character is shown. In Quality Street (1903) and 
Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire (1905) we have Barrie's April- 
weather manner, a strange combination of sentiment 
and anti-sentiment. Quality Street is a story of a 
girl without girlhood. Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire is the story 
of a woman who has lost her girlhood. Neither is 
true. Both are effusions of literature, the spinning 
of a mood, but Barrie's skill has saved at least the 
first. Little Mary is one of Barrie's most delightful 
whimsies, but not even his art could give substance 
on the stage to the idea on which it is based. Two of 
Barrie's plays, The Admirable Crichton (1903) and 
What Every Woman Knows (1908) are based on broader 
foundations than his usual plays. These still relate 
to subtly discovered traits in human nature, but they 
have a more general significance than his studies of 
individuals. Max Beerbohm calls The Admirable 
Crichton "the best thing that has happened in my 
time to the British stage." It is a study of the con- 
stitution of society, a reference of it back to first prin- 
ciples, with the conclusion that "whatever is, is right." 
The manner by which the test is made is ingenious and 
dramatic. No more delightfully representative char- 
acters can be imagined than the group of aristocrats 
and servants who make up its cast. The love passages 
of Lady Mary and Crichton have magic in them. 
The play is so well done that its logic cannot be 
escaped. What Every Woman Knows goes back to 
Barrie's specialty, the handling of the minds of women. 
A beautiful play with some excellent characters, it is 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE 235 

more bald in planning than any other of the author's 
works. In stating the case for Maggie, Barrie per- 
mits himself a plea for a particular woman rather than 
"every woman." It is only in a little partisanship 
for women as against the selfishness of men that Barrie 
permits his art to slip. He does this again in the 
egregious character of the husband in The Twelve 
Pound Look. The Legend of Leonora is a riot of glee- 
ful fancy, perversely placed in realistic surroundings. 
Barrie is not a man to be depended upon to do the 
expected thing. Old Friends is as intense as Ibsen, 
and in Pantaloon he has given us a rather vaguely 
dramatized version of a Harlequin theme. 

The tendency toward fantasy found in Barrie has 
been taken up by other writers. It was supported in 
England by a neo-romantic tendency in the theatre 
of Europe. In Rostand's romance there had been 
much of the playful element. From Italy, the home 
of the Harlequinade, there had come some influence. 
When fancy began to stir again on English soil some of 
it sought out the materials so long popular in the 
Christmas pantomimes and began to introduce the 
clowns and the jesters of the Harlequinade. In 
Barrie's Pantaloon the heart of the old man is un- 
covered by the coming of a grandchild. The most 
charming play of this type is Laurence Housman's 
Prunella, produced at the Court Theatre. There 
now comes a tendency to elevate the fantastic into a 
code of playwriting and to adapt to it systems of pro- 
duction. The reaction from real things is expressed 
partly in return to a playful treatment of old formulas. 



236 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Old stories are told with a new flavor, written either 
in playful verse or in flexible prose. 

Imagination was further freed by the coming of 
Oriental motives. Japan had been an influence in 
English art since 1880. In 1903 a Japanese company 
played in London. The influence of the Russian 
Ballet, of Max Reinhardt's productions in Berlin, 
brought an interest in the more garish coloring and 
more elemental themes of Persia and Arabia. New 
systems of staging and production based upon the ideas 
of Gordon Craig, of Bakst, of Reinhardt, began to 
arrive. There developed a new artist of the stage, 
the Decorator, more than the maker of sets and per- 
spectives, the creator of inscenierung. In England 
Granville Barker was the patron of these artists. 
Mr. Albert Rothenstein and Mr. Norman Wilkinson 
and, above all, Gordon Craig, have been busy creating 
new effects. About 1911 the vogue of the picturesque 
and sensational began on the English stage. Maeter- 
linck's Blue Bird and Barrie's Peter Pan, Reinhardt's 
The Miracle and Suviurun, and the Russian Ballet at 
Covent Garden awoke England to new ideas of stage 
beauty. 

Some of these depended upon alien motives. But 
they began to exert an immediate influence on play- 
wrights. Galsworthy writes The Pigeon and The 
Little Dream; Shaw writes Fanny's First Play and 
Androcles and the Lion, Masefield writes The Faithful 
on a Japanese theme. Other dramatists appear who 
have had no connection with the older movements of 
realism. Rudolf Besier's Don (1909) had been a deli- 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE 237 

cate study of Quixotism, something of a forerunner for 
The Pigeon but more dainty of mood ; his Lady Patricia 
(1911) is a delightful satire on preciosity. Edward 
Knoblauch's The Cottage in the Air (1909) a flimsy bit, 
and his next play. Kismet, a riot of sensation, both 
belong to England though the author was born an 
American. In Lord Dunsany's The Gods of the Moun- 
tain and other plays we are transplanted to a no-man's 
land of imagination. 

The man who had been responsible for this change 
in stage theory, or at least its prophet, was Gordon 
Craig. After fifteen years of public endeavor Craig's 
work is still "a challenge of the future." Enough of 
his ideas have already been accepted to show how vital 
they were, how instinct with creation under their 
destructiveness. Craig's first stand is for the destruc- 
tion of the theatre. "To save the theatre, the theatre 
must be destroyed ", he quotes from Eleanora Duse. 
He begins his planning for the theatre of the future 
with no impeding traditions. He dismisses machinery, 
perspective scenery, and actors from his theatre. 
Believing that two men have spoiled the theatre, 
the realist and the machinist, Craig seeks to return the 
theatre to an expression of the immensities of the 
spiritual world. 

Why cannot the theatre at present reflect these im- 
mensities? Aside from the fact that it is mechanical 
and imitative, it is governed by emotion and chance. 
Alone among the arts its effects are those of random 
inspiration. Craig would introduce into the theatre 
the absolute standards of the other arts. He would 



\ 



238 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

make its method that of emotion controlled by intellect. 
He takes as a text Flaubert's words : " The artist should 
be in his work like God in creation, invisible and all 
powerful; he should be felt everywhere and seen 
nowhere. Art should be raised above personal affec- 
tion and nervous susceptibility. It is time to give it 
the perfection of the physical sciences by means of a 
pitiless method." These ideas Craig has applied to 
the theatre. In a search for a sure and pitiless method 
he has expelled from his theory of the theatre the 
human actor and all color of personal emotion. 

Evocation of the imagination is Craig's aim in art. 
But he wishes to make the principles of this evocation 
certain and fixed. He believes that the best use of 
the formula of the art lies not in itself but in its ability 
to awaken imagination. The formula has no value in 
itself. It secures value only as amended in the imagi- 
nation of the beholder. For this purpose a puppet 
will do as well as a human actor, nay better, because 
there will be no intruding personality, no variation of 
mood. 

That fijted and unchanging principle which Craig 
finds in the puppet he seeks also in the production 
as a whole. He finds this in the application to the 
production of the principles of design. Design, the 
factors of sight and mass, supply for Craig a new 
medium of a fixed and exact quality. There are few 
traditional elements in this medium save as these are 
derived from certain suggestions of race ceremonial, 
the lines of architecture and of ornament. Most of 
the factors of this medium are derived from the new 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE 239 

discoveries in the values of light and color, and the 
recent recognition of dramatic suggestion in designs, 
in color arrangements, in draperies, and masses. 

Craig goes further in his reaction against rationalism 
than any other artist. His theories are not, in his 
opinion, theories for the few. They depend upon the 
instinctive response of men in groups to appeals of 
purely sensuous nature. In his ideal the theatre is a 
place of the many in which the reactions of men are 
purified by response to a fine and clean medium. 
For the purpose of an appeal to the mass imagination 
he has invented the " iiber-marionette ", a large figure 
to serve as an instrument of dramatic imagination. 
Craig has gone further than any other artist of the 
theatre in incorporating into drama the potentialities 
of other arts. So strongly do the designer, the mu- 
sician, and the dancer enter into his scheme that drama 
seems to become an art of the arts. 

Appropriately enough, Craig's chief significance lies 
in his stimulation of thought rather than in his deeds. 
His revolutionary ideas are subjecting the theatre of 
commerce to a rigorous test, and there are many signs 
that his influence is being felt. Most of the fresh 
achievements in staging of Max Reinhardt and Gran- 
ville Barker are to be referred to his theories. He 
began his career as a producer in London in March, 
1902, by presenting at the Great Queen Street Theatre 
Handel's Acis and Galatea, and Purcell's Masque of 
Love. These productions are significant of his later 
ideas through the fact that his production was an 
"arrangement" of figures and shadows on a one-color 



240 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

background unbroken by flies. Craig has designed 
productions for several of Shakespeare's plays, only a 
few of which he has been able to render. His chief 
work has been done at his school in Florence, Italy, 
and through the columns of his magazine The Mask. 

With Craig our study of the modern English theatre 
ends on a note of speculation not unmixed with promise. 
Since 1914 the theatre of England has been standing 
still awaiting the turn of events. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 

A selected list of plays written by English dramatists 
from the freeing of the theatres to the beginning of the 
Great War. 

Dates at left refer to first production. Dates at right 
refer to first publication. In cases where the play appeared 
undated in a series of stage plays, reference is made to the 
name of the publisher and the number of the play in the 
series. The chief series were as follows : 

Cumberland, J. British Theatre. London, 1829 ff. 
Minor Theatre. London, 1828/. 
Dicks, J. Standard Plays. London, 1883 ff. 
DuNCOMBE, J. Edition of the British Theatre. London, 

1825/. 
French, S. Acting Edition of Plays. Continuation of 

Lacy. London and New York. To date. 
Hilsenberg, L. The Modern English Comic Theatre. 

London, 1843 ff. 
Lacy, T. H. Acting Edition of Plays. London, 1850 /. 
Lewes, G. H. Selections from the Modern British Drama. 

London, 1868. 
Webster, B. The National Acting Drama. London, 

1837/. 

LIST OF PLAYS 

A Beckett, Gilbert Abbott (1811-1856) and Lemon, 
Mark (1809-1870) 

1844. Don Cesar de Bazan. Adapted from French 
of Dumanoir and Dennery. London, 1844. 
243 



244 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Albert, James (1838-1889) 

1870. Two Roses. London, 1870. 

1873. Oriana. 

1877. Pink Dominoes. From Hennequin and 
Delacour. 
Baker, Elizabeth 

1909. Chains. London, 1911. 
Barker, Harley Granville (1877- ) 

1902. The Marrying of Ann Leete. 
1905. The Voysey Inheritance. 

1907. Waste. 

In Three Plays. London, 1909. 

1910. The Madras House. London, 1911. 
Barker, H. G. and Housman, Laurence (1867- ) 

1904. Prunella. London, 1906. 
Barrie, Sir James Matthew (1860- ) 
1892. Walker, London. S. French. 
1895. The Professor's Love Story. 
1897. The Little Minister. 

1900. The Wedding Guest. Fortnightly Review, 
1900. 

1903. Quality Street. London, 1914. 

1903. The Admirable Crichton. London, 1914. 

1903. Little Mary. 

1904. Peter Pan. 

1905. Alice-Sit-By-the-Fire. 
1905. Pantaloon. London, 1914. 

1908. What Every Woman Knows. 
1910. Old Friends. London, 1910. 

1910. The Twelve Pound Look. London, 1914. 

1912. Rosalind. London, 1914. 

1914. The Will. London, 1914. 

1914. The Legend of Leonora. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 245 

1914. "Der Tag"; or, The Tragic Man. London, 

1914. 
1916. A Kiss for Cinderella. 
Bennett, Arnold (1867- ) 

Cupid and Commonsense. London, 1909. 
1909. What the Pubhc Wants. London, 1909. 

1911. The Honeymoon. London, 1911. 
1913. The Great Adventure. London, 1913. 

Bennett, A. and Knoblauch, E. (1874- ) 

1912. Milestones. London, 1912. 
Bernard, William Bayle (1807-1875). 

1832. Rip Van Winkle. Lacy. 

1833. The Nervous Man. Lacy. 
1836. The Man About Town. Lacy. 

Besier, Rudolph (1878- ) 

1909. Don. London, 1910. 

1909. Olive Latimer's Husband. London, 1909. 

1911. Lady Patricia. London, 1911. 
BoucicAULT, Dion L. (1820?-1890) 

1841. London Assurance. London, 1844. 

1844. Old Heads and Young Hearts. Webster (13). 

1852. The Corsican Brothers. Founded on a drama- 
tization of Dumas's Les Freres Corses, by 
Grange and Xavier de Montepin. 

1854. Louis XL 

1860. The Colleen Bawn ; or, The Brides of Garry- 

owen. Founded on Gerald Griffin's novel 
The Collegian. Lacy (63). 

1861. The Octoroon. Lacy (65). 

1862. Jessie Brown; or. The Relief of Lucknow. 

Lacy (38). 

1864. The Streets of London. 

1865. Arrah-na-Pogue. London, 1865. 



246 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

1868. After Dark ; or, a Tale of London Life. 

1874. Led Astray. 

1875. The Shaughraun. Lacy (123). 
BouciCAULT, Dion L. and Reade, Charles. 

1868. Foul Play. London, 1868. 
Brighouse, Harold. 

1911. The Odd Man Out. London, 1912. 

1913. Garside's Career. London, 1914. 

1914. Hobson's Choice. New York, 1916. 
Brougham, John (1810-1880). 

1863. The Duke's Motto. From Paul Feval's Le 
Bossu. 
Browning, Robert (1812-1889) 

1837. Strafford. London, 1837. 

King Victor and King Charles. London, 1842. 
The Return of the Druses. London, 1843. 
1843. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. London, 1843. 
1853. Colombe's Birthday. London, 1844. 
1884. In a Balcony. London, 1853. 
Buchanan, Robert (1841-1901) 

1880. A Nine Days' Queen. 

1881. The Shadow of the Sword. Dramatized from 

his own novel of the same name. 

1883. Storm Beaten. Dramatized from his novel 
God and the Man. 

1883. Lady Clare. From G. Ohnet's Le Maitre de 
Forges. 

1886. Sophia. Dramatization of Fielding's Tom 
Jones. 

1888. Joseph's Sweetheart. Dramatization of Field- 
ing's Joseph Andrews. 

1890. Clarissa Harlowe. Dramatization of Richard- 
son's History of Clarissa Harlowe, 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 247 

1890. Miss Tomboy. Adaptation of Vanbrugh's 

The Relapse. 
1890. The Sixth Commandment. From Dosto- 

ievski's Crime and Punishment. 

1894. The Charlatan. 

Buchanan, Robert W. and Jay, Harriett. 

1884. Alone in London. 
BucKSTONE, John Baldwin (1802-1879). 

1828. Luke the Laborer. 

1835. The Dream at Sea. 
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton (1803- 

1873). 

1837. The Duchess de la Valliere. London, 1837. 

1838. The Lady of Lyons. London, 1838. 

1839. Richelieu; or. The Conspiracy. London, 

1839. 

1840. Money. London, 1840. 

The Dramatic Works of Sir Edward Lytton- 
Bulwer. London, 1841. 
Byron, H. J. (1834-1884) 

1868. Cyril's Success. Lacy (89). 
1873. La Fille de Madame Angot. From Siraudin 
and Clairville. 

1875. Our Boys. Lacy (116). 

1876. Wrinkles. French (115). 
1878. A Fool and his Money. 

Cannan, Gilbert (1884- ) 

1910. Miles Dixon. London, 1914. 

1911. James and John. London, 1914. 
Carton, Richard Claude (R. D. Critchett) (1856- 

1890. Sunlight and Shadow. S. French. 

1895, The Home Secretary. 
1898. Lord and Lady Algy. 



248 THE CONTEMPORABY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

1909. Lorrimer Sabiston, Dramatist. 
Carton, R. C. and Raleigh, C. 

1885. The Great Pink Pearl. 
Chambers, Charles Haddon (1860- ) 

1888. Captain Swift. London, 1902. 

1894. John a' Dreams. 

1899. The Tyranny of Tears. London, 1902. 

1909. Sir Anthony. London, 1909. 
1911. Passers-by. London, 1913. 

1913. Tante. 

Chapin, Harold (1886-1916) 

1914. Augustus in Search of a Father. 1915. 

1915. It's the Poor that Helps the Poor. 1915. 
1915. The Dumb and the Blind. 1915. 

Collins, Wilkie (1824-1889) and Dickens, Charles 
(1812-1870). 

1867. No Thoroughfare. 
Collins, W. and Fechter, Charles (1824-1879). 

1869. Black and White. 
Davidson, John (1857-1909). 

Bruce. London, 1886. 
Smith ; a Tragic Farce. London, 1888. 
Scaramouch in Naxos. London, 1889. 
1905. For the Crown. From Coppee's Pour la Cou- 
ronne. London, 1905. 
Self's the Man. London, 1901. 
The Knight of the Maypole. London, 1902. 
The Theatrocrat. London, 1909. 
Davies, Hubert Henry (1876- ) 
1903. Cousin Kate. Boston, 1910. 
1903. Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace. Boston, 1910. 
1907. The Mollusc. London, 1914. 

1910. A Single Man. London, 1914. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 249 

1914. Outcast. 

1914. Lady Epping's Lawsuit. London, 1914. 
Dean, Basil. 

1910. Effie. 
Down, Oliphant. 

1914. The Maker of Dreams. London, 1914. 
Drinkwater, John. 

1914. Rebellion. London, 1914. 
Du Maurier, Guy. 

1909. An Englishman's Home. London, 1909. 
Esmond, Henry V. (1869- ) 

1899. Grierson's Way. 

1901. When We Were Twenty-one. S. French. 
Fagan, James Bernard (1874- ) 

1904. The Prayer of the Sword. 

1909. The Earth. London, 1913. 
FiTZBALL (Ball), Edward (1792-1873) 

1833. Jonathan Bradford ; or, The Murder at the 

Roadside Inn. Duncombe. 

1834. Esmeralda; or, the Deformed of Notre 

Dame, from Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. 
Fox, S. M. 

1913. The Waters of Bitterness. London, 1912. 

1913. This Generation. London, 1913. 
Francis, John Oswald. 

1913. Change. London, 1914. 
Galsworthy, John (1867- 

1906. The Silver Box. 

1907. Joy. 

1909. Strife. 

Plays : The SUver Box ; Joy ; Strife. London, 
1909. 

1910. Justice. London, 1910. 



250 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OP ENGLAND 

1912. The Little Dream. London, 1911. 
1912. The Eldest Son. London, 1912. 

1912. The Pigeon. London, 1912. 

1913. The Fugitive. London, 1913. 

1914. The Mob. London, 1914. 
Gibson, William Wilfred. 

Daily Bread. London, 1912. 
Womankind. London, 1912. 
Gilbert, Willla.m Schwenck (1835-1911) 

1870. The Princess. From Tennyson's The Prin- 
cess. Lacy (87). 

1870. The Palace of Truth. From Mme. de Genlis's 

Le Palais de la Verite. Lacy (89). 

1871. Pygmalion and Galatea. Lacy (103). 

1873. The Wicked World. London, 1873. 

1874. Charity. Lacy (123). 

1874. Sweethearts. Lacy (111). 

1875. Tom Cobb ; or. Fortune's Toy. Lacy (117). 
1875. Broken Hearts. Lacy (118). 

1875. Trial by Jury. London, 1878. 

1876. Dan'l Druce. 

1877. Engaged. Lacy (117). 

1877. The Sorcerer. London, 1878. 

1878. H. M. S. Pinafore ; or. The Lass That Loved 

a Sailor. London, 1878. 

1879. The Pirates of Penzance ; or, The Slave of 

Duty. London, 1887. 

1881. Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride! London, 

1881. 

1882. lolanthe; or. The Peer and the Peri. Lon- 

don, 1885. 
1884. Princess Ida ; or, The Castle Adamant. Lon- 
don, 1884. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 251 

1884. Comedy and Tragedy. 

1885. The Mikado, or, The Town of Titipu. Lon- 

don, 1885. 

1887. Ruddigore ; or, The Witch's Curse. London, 

1887. 

1888. The Yeoman of the Guard ; or. The Merryman 

and his Maid. London, 1888. 

1889. The Gondoliers ; or, The King of Barataria. 

London, 1889. 
1893. Utopia Limited ; or. The Flowers of Progress. 
London, 1893. 
Original Plays of W. S. Gilbert, 1st and 2d 
Series, London, 1876-1881 ; 3d Series, Lon- 
don, 1903; 4th Series, London, 1911. 
Original Comic Operas of W. S. Gilbert, Lon- 
don, 1890. 
Grundy, Sydney (1848-1915) 

1877. Mammon. From Feuillet's Montjoye. 

1879. The Snowball. S. French (131), 1893. 

1880. In Honour Bound. Suggested by Scribe's 

comedy Une Chaine. S. French (123), 
1885. 

1882. The Novel Reader. From Meilhac and 

Halevy, La Petite Marquise. 

1883. The Glass of Fashion. French (142), 1899. 
A Pair of Spectacles. From Les Petits Oiseaux, 

Labiche and Delacour. S. French (142), 
1899. 

1887. The Arabian Nights. Founded on the Ger- 
man of Von Moser. S. French (134). 

1889. A Fool's Paradise. S. French (142), 1899. 
(The Mouse Trap.) 

1893. Sowing the Wind. S. French (142). 



252 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

1894. An Old Jew. 

1894. A Bunch of Violets. From Feuillet's Mant- 

joye. 

1895. The Greatest of These. 

1905. Business is Business. From French of Octave 
Mirbeau. 
Hamilton, Cosmo. 

1913. The Blindness of Virtue. London, 1913. 
Hankin, St. John (1860-1909). 

1903. The Two Mr. Wetherbys. 

1905. The Return of the Prodigal. 

1906. The Charity that Began at Home. 

1907. The Cassilis Engagement. 

1908. The Last of the De Mullins. 

Dramatic Works of St. John Hankin, with In- 
troduction by John Drinkwater. London, 
1912. 
Hastings, Basil Macdonald (1881- 

1912. The New Sin. London, 1912. 
HoBBES, John Oliver (Pearl Marla Teresa Craigie) 
(1867-1906) 
1898. The Ambassador. London, 1898. 
1900. The Wisdom of the Wise. London, 1900. 
Hope, Anthony (Hawkins) (1863- ) 

1898. The Adventure of Lady Ursula. New York, 
1899. 
HoRNE, Richard Henry (1803-1884) 

The Death of Marlowe. London, 1837. 
Houghton, Stanley (1881-1914) 

1910. The Younger Generation. London, 1910. 
1912. Hindle Wakes. London, 1912. 

Works of Stanley Houghton. London, 1914. 
Jerome, Jerome Klapka (1859- ) 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 253 

1900. Miss Hobbs. S. French. 

1907. The Passing of the Third Floor Back. Lon- 

don, 1907. 
1911. The Master of Mrs. Chilvers. 
Jerrold, Douglas (1803-1857) 

1829. Black-Eyed Susan; or, "All in the Downs." 

Duncombe (4). 
1832. The Rent Day. London, 1832. 
Jones, Henry Arthur (1851- ) 

1882. The Silver King. New York, 1907. 
1884. Saints and Sinners. London, 1891. 

1889. The Middleman. New York, 1907. 

1890. Judah. London, 1894. 

1891. The Dancing Girl. New York, 1907. 
1891. The Crusaders. London, 1893. 

1893. The Tempter. London, 1898. 

1894. The Masqueraders. London, 1894. 

1894. The Case of Rebellious Susan. London, 1894. 

1895. The Triumph of the Philistines. London, 

1899. 

1896. Michael and His Lost Angel. London, 1896. 

1896. The Rogue's Comedy. London, 1898. 

1897. The Liars. London, 1901. 

1898. The Manoeuvres of Jane. London, 1904. 

1899. Carnac Sahib. London, 1899. 

1900. The Lackey's Carnival. London, 1900. 
1900. Mrs. Dane's Defence. London, 1905. 

1903. Whitewashing Julia. London, 1905. 

1904. Joseph Entangled. New York, 1906. 
1906. The Hypocrites. New York, 1908. 

1908. Dolly Reforming Herself. London, 1908. 
1910. We Can't Be as Bad as All That. New York, 

1910. 



254 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

1913. I'he Divine Gift. London, 1913. 

1913. Mary Goes First. London, 1913. 
1915. The Lie. New York, 1915. 

Knowles, James Sheridan (1784-1862) 

1820. Virginius. London, 1820. 

1825. William Tell. London, 1825. 

1832. The Hunchback. London, 1832. 

1833. The Wife. London, 1833. 
1837. The Love Chase. London, 1837. 

The Dramatic Works of James Sheridan 
Knowles. 2 vols. London, 1856. 
Lawrence, D. H. 

1914. The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd. London, 1914. 
LovELL, George William (1804-1878) 

1842. Love's Sacrifice; or. The Rival Merchants. 

Lacy (67). 
1846. The Wife's Secret. Lacy (82). 
LovELL, Maria (1803-1877) 

1851. Ingomar the Barbarian. Adapted from Fried- 
rich Halm's Der Sohn der Wildniss. Lon- 
don, 1854. 
Marston, Westland (1819-1890) 

1841, The Patrician's Daughter. London, 1841. 

1849. Strathmore. London, 1849. 

1850. Marie de Meranie. London, 1850. 
1858. A Hard Struggle. Lacy (48). 

1863. Donna Diana. From Moreto's El Desden 
con el Desden. 

1866. A Favorite of Fortune. 

1867. A Hero of Romance. From Feuillet's Le 

Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre. 
The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Westland 
Marston. 2 vols. London, 1876. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 255 

Masefield, John. 

1908. The Tragedy of Nan. London, 1909. 

1910. The Tragedy of Pompey the Great. London, 

1910. 
Philip the King. London, 1914. 
The Faithful. London, 1915. 
Mason, A. E. W. (1865- ) 

1911. The Witness for the Defence. S. French. 
1914. Green Stockings. S. French. 

Maugham, William Somerset (1874- ) 

1903. A Man of Honour. Fortnightly Review, 
1903. 

1907. Lady Frederick. 

1908. Jack Straw. London, 1912. 

1908. Mrs. Dot. London, 1912. 

1909. Smith. London, 1913. 

1910. The Tenth Man. London, 1913. 
1914. The Land of Promise. London, 1914. 

McEvoY, Charles (1879- ) 

1907. David Ballard. London, 1907. 
Meredith, George (1828-1909) 

1910. The Sentimentalists. London, 1912. 
Merivale, Herman Charles (1839-1906) 

1872. A Son of the Soil. Founded on Ponsard's 
Lion Amour eux. Lacy (97). 

1874. The White Pilgrim. Founded on a legend by 

Gilbert a Beckett. Lacy (113). 
Merivale, H. C. and Grove, F. C. 

1879. Forget-Me-Not. 
Merivale, H. C. and Simpson, J. Palgrave. 

1875. All for Her. From Dickens' A Tale of 

Two Cities. 
Alone. Lacy (103). 



256 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Moffat, Graham 

1911. Bunty Pulls the Strings. 
MoNKHOusE, Allan 

1910. The Choice. 

See Four Tragedies, London, 1913. 
Moore, George (1857- ) 

1892. The Strike at Arlingford. London, 1893. 
1900. The Bending of the Bough. London, 

1900. 

1911. Esther Waters. 
Morton, John Maddison (1811-1891) 

Lend Me Five Shillings. Lacy. 
Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw. Lacy. 
1847. Box and Cox. 
Murray, Gilbert (1866- ) 

1899. Carlyon Sahib. London, 1900. 

From Euripides : Hippoly tus ; Bacchse ; Trojan 
Women ; Electra ; Medea. Played at Court 
Theatre, 1902-1907. 
OXENFORD, J. (1812-1877) 

1875. The Two Orphans. From Dennery's Les Deux 

Orphelines. London, 1875. 
1859. Ivy Hall. From Feuillet's Le Roman d\un 
Jeune Homme Pauvre. 
The World of Fashion. From Scribe and Le- 
gouve, Les Droits de Fee. Lacy (55). 
Parker, Louis Napoleon (1852- ) 

1893. Gudgeons. 
1896. Rosemary. 

1909. Beethoven. 

1910. Pomander Walk. London, 1912. 

1911. Disraeh. London, 1913. 
1913. Joseph and his Brethren. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 257 

Phillips, Stephen (1868-1916) 

1901. Paolo and Francesca. London, 1900. 

1900. Herod. London, 1901. 

1902. Ulysses. London, 1902. 

The Sin of David. London, 1904. 

1906. Nero. London, 1906. 
PiNEKO, Sir Arthur Wing (1855- ) 

1881. The Money Spinner. 

1883. Lords and Commons. 

1885. The Magistrate. London, 1892. 

1886. The Schoolmistress. London, 1894. 

1886. The Hobby Horse. London, 1892. 

1887. Dandy Dick. London, 1893. 

1888. Sweet Lavender. London, 1893. 

1888. The Weaker Sex. London, 1894. 

1889. The Profligate. London, 1891. 

1890. The Cabinet Minister. London, 1892. 

1891. Lady Bountiful. London, 1891. 
1891. The Times. London, 1891. 
1893. The Amazons. London, 1895. 

1893. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. London, 1895. 

1895. The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. London, 1896. 

1895. The Benefit of the Doubt. London, 1896. 

1897. The Princess and the Butterfly. London, 1898. 

1898. Trelawney of the "Wells." London, 1899. 

1899. The Gay Lord Quex. London, 1900. 

1901. Iris. London, 1902. 

1903. Letty. London, 1904. 

1904. A Wife without a Smile. London, 1905. 
1906. His House in Order. London, 1906. 

1908. The Thunderbolt. London, 1909. 

1909. Midchannel. London, 1911. 

1911. Preserving Mr. Panmure. London, 1912. 



258 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

1913. Play-goers. London, 1913. 
1912. The "Mind the Paint" Girl. London, 1913. 
1915. The Big Drum. 
Planche, James Robinson (1796-1880) 

1820. The Vampire. London, 1820. 

1821. Kenilworth Castle ; or, The Days of Queen 

Bess. 

1822. Maid Marian. Opera. London, 1822. 
1826. Oberon. London, 1826. 

1828. Charles XII ; or. The Siege of Stralsund. 
Cumberland's British Theatre (25). 

1840. The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. London, 
1840. 

1843. Fortunio. London, 1843. 

1843. The Fair One with the Golden Locks. Christ- 
mas Piece. London, 1852. 

1849. Island of Jewels. Christmas Piece. Founded 
on Serpentin Vert of Countess d'Aulnoy. 
London, 1850. 

1846. The "Birds" of Aristophanes. London, 1846. 

1849. Beauty and the Beast. London, 1849. 

The Extravaganzas of J. R. Planche, 1825- 
1871. 5 vols. London, 1879. 
Planche, J. R. and Dance, Chakles. 

1831. Olympic Revels ; or, Prometheus and Pandora. 
Burlesque. London, 1834. 

1836. Riquet with the Tuft. From the French 
Riquet a la Houppe. Extravaganza. Lon- 
don, 1837. 
Reade, Charles (1814-1884) 

1851. The Ladies' Battle. Abridged from French 
of Scribe and Legouve. Lacy (108). 

1853. Goldl FiomZo\a,'s L'Assommoir. Lacy (11). 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 259 

1854. The Courier of Lyons. From the French of 
Moreau, Siraudin and Delacour. Lacy (15). 
Played also as The Lyons Mail. 
Robertson, Thomas William (1829-1871) 

1864. David Garrick. From French of Melisville's 

Sullivan. Lacy (117). 

1865. Society. Lacy. (71). 

1866. Ours. De Witt, New York, 1879. 

1867. Caste. De Witt, New York, 1878. 

1868. Play. Lacy (1969). 

1869. School. From German of Roderick Benedix : 

Aschenbrddel. De Witt, New York, 1879. 

1869. Home. From French of Augier: L'Aven- 

turiere. De Witt, New York, 1879. 

1870. M. P. Lacy (1963) 

The Principal Dramatic Works of Thomas W. 
Robertson. Edited by T. W. Robertson, 
the Younger. London, 1889. 
Selby, Charles (1802 ?-1863) 

1843. Robert Macaire ; or, L'Auberge des Adrets, 
or, The Two Murderers. Duncombe (123). 
Sharp, William (1855-1905) 

A Northern Night. London, 1894. 
The Passion of Pere Hilarion. London, 1894. 
The Birth of a Soul. London, 1894. 
The Fallen God. London, 1894. 
1900. The House of Usna. London, 1900. 
The Immortal Hour. London, 1900. 
Shaw, George Bernard (1856- ) 

1892. Widowers' Houses. London, 1898. 

The Philanderer. London, 1898. 
1902. Mrs. Warren's Profession. London, 1898. 
1894. Arms and the Man. London, 1898. 



260 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

1897. Candida. London, 1898. 

1897. The Man of Destiny. London, 1898. 

1900. You Never Can Tell. London, 1898. 

Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant contain the 
above in 2 vols. London, 1898. 

1897. The Devil's Disciple. London, 1900. 

1906. Caesar and Cleopatra. London, 1900. 

1900. Captain Brassbound's Conversion. London, 
1900. 
The above three in Plays for Puritans. Lon- 
don, 1900. 

1905. Man and Superman. London, 1903. 

1903. John Bull's Other Island. London, 1907. 

1904. How He Lied to Her Husband. London, 1907. 

1905. Major Barbara. London, 1909. 

1906. The Doctor's Dilemma. London, 1911. 

1908. Getting Married. London, 1911. 

1909. Press Cuttings. London, 1909. 

1909. The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet. London, 

1911. 

1910. MisaUiance. London, 1914. 

1911. Fanny's First Play. London, 1914. 

1912. Androcles and the Lion. New York, 1913. 

1913. Pygmalion. Berlin, 1913 ; London, 1914. 
1916. The Great Catherine. New York, 1915. 

Sims, George Robert (1847- ) 
1881. The Lights o' London. 

1885. Harbour Lights. 

1886. The Romany Rye. 
1888. The Scarlet Sin. 
1896. Two Little Vagabonds. 

Sims, G. R. and Pettitt, Henry. 
1883. In the Ranks. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 261 

Simpson, John Palgrave (1807-1887). 

1857. Daddy Hardacre. 

1859. A School for Coquettes. Lacy (91). 

1861. A Scrap of Paper. From Sardou's Pattes de 
Mouche. Lacy (51). 
Shadows of the Past. Lacy (97). 
Simpson, J. Palgrave and Dale, Felix. 
1868. Time and the Hour. Lacy (81). 

SOWERBY, GiTHA. 

1912. Rutherford and Son. London, 1912. 
Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894) and Henley, 
W. E. (1849-1903) 
1882. Deacon Brodie. 
1890. Beau Austin. London, 1892. 

Robert Macaire. London, 1897. 
SuTRO, Alfred (1863- ) 

1904. The Walls of Jericho. S. French. 
1904. MoUentrave on Women. London, 1905. 

1906. The Fascinating Mr. Vanderveldt. London, 

1906. 

1907. John Glayde's Honour. London, 1907. 

1908. The Builder of Bridges. London, 1909. 
1911. The Perplexed Husband. London, 1913. 

Talfourd, Thomas Noon (1795-1854) 

1836. Ion. London, 1835. 
Taylor, Sir Henry (1800-1886) 

1847. Philip van Artevelde. London, 1834. 
Taylor, Tom (1817-1880) 

1855. Still Waters Run Deep. Lacy (22). 

1858. Our American Cousin. 

1860. The Overland Route. Lacy (No. 1853). 
1863. The Ticket of Leave Man. From Brisebarre 

and Nus, Le Retour de Melun. Lacy (59). 



262 THE CONTEMPORAKY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

1869. The Fool's Revenge. From Hugo's Le Roi 
s' amuse. Lacy (43). 

1871. Joan of Arc. 
1875. Anne Boleyn. 

Historical Dramas of Tom Taylor. London, 
1877. 
Taylor, Tom and Dubourg, A. W. 

1859. New Men and Old Acres. Lacy (90). 
Taylor, Tom and Reade, Charles (1814-1884). 
1852. Masks and Faces. London, 1854. 
1854. A King's Rival. London, 1854. 
1854. Two Loves and a Life. London, 1854. 
Todhunter, John (1839-1915) 

1893. The Black Cat. 

1894. The Comedy of Sighs. 
Webb, Charles. 

1856. Belphegor, or, The Mountebank. From Pail- 
lasse of Dennery and Fournier. 
Wilde, Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills (1856-1900) 

1892. Lady Windermere's Fan. London, 1893. 

1893. A Woman of No Importance. London, 1894. 

1895. Salome. Paris, 1893 ; London, 1894. 
1895. An Ideal Husband. London, 1899. 

1895. The Importance of Being Earnest. London, 
1899. 
Wills, W. G. (1828-1891) 

1872. Medea in Corinth. 

1872. Charles the First. Edinburgh and London, 

1873. 

1873. Eugene Aram. 

1873. Olivia. From Goldsmith's The Vicar of 

Wakefield. 
1878. NellGwynne. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 263 

1878. Vanderdecken. (The Flying Dutchman.) 

1883. Claudian. 

Zangwill, Israel (1864- ) 

1899. Children of the Ghetto. 

1903. Merely Mary Ann. 

1908. The Melting Pot. London, 1909. 

1911. The War God. London, 1911. 

1912. The Next Religion. London, 1912. 

In addition to the above consider the plays of Shirley 
Brooks, R. B. Brough, William Brough, Frederick Wil- 
liam Broughton, Savile Clarke, J. Sterling Coyne, Henry 
T. Craven, Charles Dance, Edward Falconer, Augustus 
Harris, Colin Hazelwood, Henry Herman, Thomas Hailes 
Lacy, Slingsby Lawrence (G. H.Lewes), Charles Maltby, 
Charles Matthews, Paul Merritt, Henry Pettitt, T. Edgar 
Pemberton, Watts Phillips, Robert Reece, George Rob- 
erts, S. Theyre Smith, Edward Sterling, W. E. Suter, 
Francis Talfourd, Charles Thomas. 



BOOK LIST 
Bibliographies, Dictionaries, and Play Lists 

Adams, W. D. A Dictionary of the Drama, A-G. 
Philadelphia, 1904. 

Bates, K. L. and Godfrey, L. B. English Drama: A 
Working Basis. Wellesley College, 1896. 

Chandler, F. W. Aspects of Modern Drama. Appen- 
dix. New York, 1914. 

Clapp, J. B. and Edgett, E. F. Plays of the Present. 
Dunlap Society Publications. New York, 1902. 

Clarence, R. The Stage Cyclopedia. London, 1909. 

Faxon, F. W. Dramatic Index. Boston, 1909/. 



264 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

French, S. International Descriptive Catalogue of Plays 
and Dramatic Works. London, New York. 1902- 
1904. 

Lewisohn, L. The Modern Drama. Appendix. New 
York, 1915. 

Lowe, R. W. Bibliographical Account of Enghsh Theat- 
rical Literature. London, 1888. 

Pascoe, C. E. The Dramatic List. London, 1879. 

Pence, J. H. The Magazine and the Drama : an Index. 
Dunlap Society Publications, Vol. 17. New York, 
1896. 

Scott, C. The Drama of Yesterday and To-day. Appen- 
dix. London, 1899. 
Catalogue of the British Museum with Supplement. 
See plays listed under Cumberland, Duncombe, French, 

and Lacy. 
Play Lists of W. H. Baker and Company, Boston, and 

The Dramatic Publishing Company, Chicago. 

Books on the Theory of the Theatre 

Archer, Frank. How to Write a Good Play. London, 1892. 
Archer, W. Playmaking, a Manual of Craftsmanship. 

London, 1912. 
Burton, R. How to See a Play. New York, 1914. 
Butcher, S. N. Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine 

Art. London, 1894. 
Caffin, C. H. The Appreciation of the Drama. New 

York, 1908. 
Courtney, W. L. The Idea of Tragedy. London, 1900. 
Freytag, G. Technique of the Drama. Translated by 

E. J. MacEwan. New York, 1895. 
Hamilton, C. M. The Theory of the Theatre. New 

York, 1910. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 265 

Hennequin, a. The Art of Playwriting. Boston, 1890. 

Lewes, G. H. On Actors and the Art of Acting. Lon- 
don, 1875. 

Matthews, B. A Study of the Drama. Boston, 1910. 
Editor, PubHcations of Dramatic Museum of Colum- 
bia University. 3 Series, 1914, 1915, 1916. 

Meredith, G. The Idea of Comedy. London, 1879. 

PoLTi, G. Les Trente-six Situations Dramatiques. Paris, 
1895. 

Price, W. T. The Technique of the Drama. New York, 
1897. 
Analysis of Play Construction. New York, 1908. 

ScHLEGEL, A. W. VON. Lecturcs on Dramatic Art 
and Literature. Translated by J. Black. London, 
1886. 

Symons, a. Plays, Acting and Music. London, 1909. 
Studies in Seven Arts. London, 1906. 

Magazine Articles 

Courtney, W. L. 

Dramatic Construction and the Need of a New 
Technique. Quarterly Review, 219 : 80. 
Realistic Drama. Fortnightly Review, 99 : 945. 
Dramatic Criticism. Contemporary Review, 64 : 692. 

General History of Drama and Theatre of the 
Period 

Archer, W. Article on Modern English Drama in En- 
cyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition. London, 1910. 

Baker, H. B. The London Stage, 1576-1903. London, 
1904. 

Borsa, M. The English Stage of To-day. Translated 
by Brinton. London, 1908. 



266 THE CONTEMPORABY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

BuRNAND, Sir F. C. Recollections and Reminiscences. 
London, 1914, 

Cole, J. W. Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean. 
2 vols. London, 1859. 

DiBDiN, J. C. Annals of the Edinburgh Stage. Edin- 
burgh, 1888. 

FiLON, A. The English Stage. London, 1897. 

Fitzgerald, P. A New History of the Stage. London, 
1882. 

MoLLOY, J. F. Romance of the Irish Stage. 2 vols. 
New York, 1897. 

ScHELLiNG, F. E. English Drama. New York, 1914. 

Scott, C. The Drama of Yesterday and To-day. Lon- 
don, 1899. 

Stahl, E. L. Das Englische Theater im 19. Jahrhundert. 
Leipzig, 1914. 

Thorndike, a. H. Tragedy. Boston, 1908. 

TiTTERTON, W. R. From Theatre to Music Hall. Lon- 
don, 1912. 

Traill, H. D. Social England. Vol. IV. London, 
1896-1897. 

Wyndham, H. S. Annals of the Covent Garden Theatre. 
2 vols. London, 1905. 

Chapter I. The Early Victorian Theatre 

A Beckett, G. A. Quizziology of the British Drama. 
London, 1846. 

Baker, H. B. The London Stage, 1576-1903. Lon- 
don, 1904. 

Bellows, H. Claims of the Drama. Introduction by 
J. B. Buckstone. London, 1859. 

Cole, J. W. Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean. 
2 vols. London, 1859. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 267 

FiTZBALL, E. Thirty-five Years of a Dramatic Author's 

Life. London, 1858. 
HoRNE, R. H. The New Spirit of the Age. London, 

1845. 
Nicholson, W. The Struggle for a Free Stage in London, 

Boston, 1906. 
Planche, J. R. Recollections and Reflections. 2 vols. 

London, 1872. 

Extravaganzas. 5 vols. London, 1879. 

The Drama at Home. Extravaganza. London, 1844. 
Stahl, E. L. Das Englische Theater im 19. Jahrhunderty 

Leipzig, 1914. 
Walsh, T. Life of Dion Boucicault. Dunlap Society 

Publications. New York, 1915. 

Magazine Articles 

Amateur Theatricals of Dickens. Eclectic Magazine, 

76 : 322. 
Cook, D. Thackeray and the Theatre. Critic, 3 : 80. 
De Leon, T. C. Christmas Pantomimes. Lippincott, 

3:36. 
Anonymous. Dickens as a Dramatist. Living Age, 154: 

446. Quarterly Review, January, 1872. 
Paston, G. An Apostle of Melodrama (Edward Fitzball). 

Fortnightly Review, 94 : 96. 

Chapter II. Decline of the Romantic Tradition 

Archer, W. The Life of Macready. New York, 1890. 

Bates, A. The Plays of Robert Browning, with Intro- 
duction. Belles Lettres Series. New York, 1904. 

Beers, H. A. English Romanticism in the Nineteenth 
Century. New York, 1901. 



268 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Brereton, a. Life of Irving. 2 vols. London, 1908. 
Cole, J. W. Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean. 

2 vols. London, 1859. 
Coleman, J. Players and Playwrights I have Known. 

2 vols. London, 1888. 

Memoirs of Samuel Phelps. London, 1886. 
Cooper, T. Bulwer-Lytton, a Biography. London, 

1873. 
EscoTT, T. H. S. Edward Bulwer, First Baron Lytton. 

London, 1910. 
Fitzgerald, P. A Life of Irving. London, 1906. 
Horne, R. H. The New Spirit of the Age. London, 

1845. 
Macready, W. C. Diary and Reminiscences. Edited 

by Sir F. Pollock. London, 1875-1876. 
Marston, W. Dramatic and Poetical Works. 2 vols. 

London, 1876. 
Matthews, B. and Hutton, L. Editors, Actors and 

Actresses of Great Britain and the United States. 

New York, 1886. 
Orr, Mrs. S. Life and Letters of Robert Browning. 

London, 1891. 
Robertson, J. Forbes. Life of Samuel Phelps. London, 

1886. 
Stoker, B. Personal Reminiscences of Sir Henry Irving. 

London, 1907. 

Magazine Articles 

Courtney, W. L. Browning as a Writer of Plays. 

Fortnightly Review, 39 : 888. 
Charles Kean. Eclectic Magazine, 21 : 538. 
The Later Dramas of J. Sheridan Knowles. Eclectic 

Magazine, 28 : 329. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 269 

Chapter III. Adaptation and Experiment 

Baker, H. B. The London Stage, 1576-1903. London, 

1904. 
Bancroft, Marie Wilton, and Squire Bancroft. Mr. 

and Mrs. Bancroft on and off the Stage. 2 vols. 

London, 1888. 
Bancroft, Sir S. Recollections of Sixty Years. London, 

1909. 
Coleman, J. Players and Playwrights I Have Known. 

2 vols. London, 1888. 
Cook, D. Hours with the Players. 2 vols. London, 1881. 

Nights at the Play. 2 vols. London, 1883. 
Pemberton, T. E. Life and Writings of T. W. Robert- 
son. London, 1893. 

Society and Caste, with Introduction. Belles Let- 

tres Series. New York, 1905. 
Reade, C. Memoir of Charles Reade. 2 vols. London, 

1887. 
Robertson, T. W. Principal Dramatic Works, with 

Memoir by his Son. 2 vols. London, 1889. 
Scott, C. The Drama of Yesterday and To-day. Lon- 
don, 1899. 
Scott, C. and Howard, C. Life of Blanchard. London, 

1891. 
Stahl, E. L. Das Englische Theater im 19. Jahrhundert. 

Leipzig, 1914. 
Walsh, T. Life of Dion Boucicault. Dunlap Society 

Publications. New York, 1915. 

Magazine Articles 

Archer, W. George Henry Lewes and the Stage. 
Fortnightly Review, 31 ; 15. 



270 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

BouciCAULT, D. Debut as a Dramatist. North Ameri- 
can Renew, 148 : 454 ; 584. 

Leaves from Diary of. North American Review, 
149 : 228. 

Egan, p. Minor Theatres of London. Atlantic, 
25 : 297. 

Hughes, T. In Memoriam, Tom Taylor. Living Age, 
146 : 802. 

Chapter IV. Toward a New English Theatre 

Arnold, M. The French Play in London, in "Irish 

Essays." London, 1882. 
Baker, H. B. The London Stage, 1576-1903. London, 

1904. 
Bancroft, M. W. and Sir S. B. Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft 

on and off the Stage. 2 vols. London, 1888. 
Bancroft, Sir S. B. Recollections of Sixty Years. Lon- 
don, 1909. 
Borsa, M. The English Stage To-day. London, 1898. 
Brereton, a. Life of Irving. 2 vols. London, 1908. 
Coleman, J. Players and Playwrights I Have Known. 

2 vols. London, 1888. 
Cook, D. Hours with the Players. 2 vols. London, 

1881. 

Nights at the Play. 2 vols. London, 1883. 
Filon, a. The English Stage. London, 1897. 
Fitzgerald, P. A Life of Irving. London, 1906. 
Hatton, J. Reminiscences of J. L. Toole. London, 1892. 
Hollingshead, J. My Life. 2 vols. London, 1895. 
Irving, H. The Stage. London, 1878. 
Kent, W. C. M. Charles Dickens as a Reader. London, 

1872. 



BIBLIOGKAPHICAL APPENDIX 271 

Lewes, G. H. On Actors and the Art of Acting. London, 
1875. 

MacKinnon, A. The Oxford Amateurs: A Short His- 
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1910. 

Marston, W. Recollections of our Recent Actors. 2 
vols. London, 1888. 

MoRLEY, H. A Playgoer's Notebook, 1851-1866. Lon- 
don, 189L 

Morris, M. Essays in Theatrical Criticism. London, 
1882. 

Pemberton, T. E. Charles Dickens and the Stage. 
London, 1888. 

John Hare, Comedian, 1865-1895. London, 1895. 
The Kendals ; a Biography. New York, 1900. 
Sir Charles Wyndham, a Biography. London, 
1904. 

Planche, J. R. Suggestions for Establishing an English 
Art Theatre. London, 1879. 

Scott, C. The Drama of Yesterday and To-day. Lon- 
don, 1899. 

Stahl, E. L. Das Englische Theater im 19. Jahrhundert. 
Leipzig, 1914. 

Terry, E. The Story of My Life. London, 1908. 

Yates, E. Recollections and Experiences. 2 vols. Lon- 
don, 1885. 

Magazine Articles 

Archer, Wm. Henrik Ibsen. St. James', 48 : 27 ; 104. 
Arnold, M. The French Play in London. Nineteenth 

Century, 6 : 228. 
Gosse, E. W. Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian Satirist. 

Fortnightly Review, 19 : 74. 



272 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Anonymous. Modern British Drama. Eclectic Maga- 
zine, 46 : 29. 

Anonymous. The Victorian Stage. Quarterly Review, 
197 : 78. 

See dramatic criticisms by Westland Marston, in The 
Athenceum, 1882, ff. 

See reviews, essays, etc., in The Theatre, edited by 
Clement Scott, 1880, /. 

See reviews in department, The Stage, in The Academy, 
1874,/. 

Chapter V. Dramatists of Transition 

Archer, W. English Dramatists of To-day. London, 

1882. 

About the Theatre. London, 1886. 
BoRSA, M. The English Stage of To-day. London, 

1908. 
Browne, E. A. W. S. Gilbert. London, 1907. 
Carr, J. W. C. Some Eminent Victorians. London, 

1908. 
Cook, D. Hours with the Players. London, 1881. 

Nights at the Play. London, 1883. 
Filon, a. The English Stage. London, 1897. 
Gilbert, W. S. Original Plays. 3^ Series. London, 

1875-1879. 

A Stage Play. In Publications of Dramatic Museum 

of Columbia Univ. 3^ Ser. 1916. 
Lawrence, A. Life of Sir Arthur Sullivan. London, 

1889. 
Yates, E. Recollections and Experiences. London, 

1885. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 273 

Magazine Articles 

Buchanan, R. Modern Drama and its Critics. Con- 
temporary Review, 56 : 908. 

Craik, D. M. Dramatic Art of the Present Day. 
Nineteenth Century, 20 : 416. 

Merivale, H. English Drama of To-day. Eclectic 
Magazine, 107 : 383. 

Chapter VI. Henry Arthur Jones 

BoRSA, M. The English Stage of To-day. London, 
1898. 

Clark, B. H. British and American Dramatists of To- 
day. New York, 1915. 

FiLON, A. The EngHsh Stage. London, 1897. 

Frohman, D. Memories of a Manager. Garden City, 
1911. 

Howe, P. P. Dramatic Portraits. London, 1913. 

Jones, H. A. The Renascence of the EngHsh Drama. 
London, 1895. 
Foundations of a National Drama. London, 1912. 

Shaw, G. B. Dramatic Opinions and Essays. London, 
1907. 

See Jones, H. A. Prefaces to Saints and Sinners, The 
Case of Rebellious Susan, The Divine Gift. See also 
Jones's Preface to Filon's The English Stage. 

Magazine Articles 

Dickinson, T. H. Henry Arthur Jones and the Dra- 
matic Renascence. North American Review, 1915. 

Howells, W. D. The Plays of Henry Arthur Jones. 
North American Review, 1907. 



274 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Jones, H. A. Literary Critics and the Drama. Nine' 

teenth Century, 53 : 614. 

Literature and the Modern Drama. Atlantic, 98: 

796. 

Cornerstones of Modern Drama. Fortnightly Review, 

86 : 1084. 
For material and criticism on Jones's early plays see 

The Theatre, edited by Clement Scott, 1880, /. 

Chapter VII. Arthur Wing Pinero 

BoRSA, M. The English Stage of To-day. London, 
1908. 

Clark, B. H. British and American Dramatists of To- 
day. New York, 1915. 

FiLON, A. The English Stage. London, 1897. 

Frohman, D. Memories of a Manager. Garden City, 
1911. 

Fyfe, H. Arthur Wing Pinero, Playwright. London, 
1902. 

Hale, E. E. Dramatists of To-day. New York, 1911. 

Howe, P. P. Dramatic Portraits. London, 1913. 

Shaw, G. B. Dramatic Opinions and Essays. London, 
1907. 

Stoecker, W. Pinero' s Dramen; Studien ueber Motive, 
Charaktere und Technik. Anglia. Vol. 35. 

Walkley, a. B. Drama and Life. London, 1908. 

Magazine Articles 

Pinero, A. W, Robert Louis Stevenson as a Dramatist. 

Cnh'c, 42:341. 
Wedmore, Sir F. Literature and the Theatre. Nine- 
teenth Century and After, 1902. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 275 

White, J. P. Mr. Pinero's The Gay Lord Quex. 

Harvard Monthly, 32:1. 
For material and criticisms on Pinero's early plays see 

The Theatre, edited by Clement Scott, 1880, /. 

Chapter VIII. The Busy Nineties 

Archer, W. The Theatrical "World" for 1893-1897. 

BoRSA, M. The English Stage of To-day. London, 1908. 

Clark, B. H. British and American Dramatists of To- 
day. New York, 1915. 

Davidson, J. Article on Pantomime. In Scaramouch in 
Naxos. London, 1889. 

Howe, P. P. Dramatic Portraits. London, 1913. 

Ingleby, L. C. Oscar Wilde, a Study. London, 1907. 

Jackson, H. The Eighteen Nineties. London, 1913. 

Kennedy, J. M. English Literature, 1880-1913. Lon- 
don, 1913. 

Laurent, R. Etudes Anglaises. Paris, 1910. 

Ransome, a. The Life of Oscar Wilde, a Critical Study. 
London, 1912. 

Shaw, G. B. Dramatic Opinions and Essays. London, 
1907. 

Sherard, R. H. Oscar Wilde. London, 1906. 
The Real Oscar Wilde. London, 1915. 

Walkley, a. B. Drama and Life. London, 1908. 

Wilde, O. The Soul of Man under Socialism. London, 
1891. 
The Truth of Masks, in Intentions, 1891. 

Magazine Articles 

Archer, W. Drama in the Doldrums. Fortnightly 
Review, 58 : 146. 



276 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

New Drama and the Free Stage. Fortnightly Re- 
view, 56 : 663. 

Plays and Acting of the Season. Fortnightly Re- 
view, 60 : 225. 

Recent Plays. Fortnightly Review, 61 : 600. 
The Mausoleum of Ibsen. Fortnightly Review, 1893. 
Ghosts and Gibberings. Pall Mall Gazette, 1893. 

Irving, H. Drama in its Relation to the State. Fort- 
nightly Review, 70 : 88. 

Moore, G. Our Dramatists and their Literature. Fort- 
nightly Review, 52 : 620. 

Tree, H. B. Some Aspects of Drama To-day. North 
American Review, 164 : 66. 

Wedmore, F. Position of the Drama in England. 
Nineteenth Century, 44 : 224. 

Consult columns of the Fortnightly Review, The Theatre, 
Pall Mall Gazette, The Truth, The Daily Telegraph, 
Comedy, edited by J. T. Grein. 

Chapter IX. The New Organization 

Archer, W. and Barker, H. G. Scheme and Estimates 

for a National Theatre. London, 1908. 
BoRSA, M. The English Stage of To-day. London, 1898. 
FowELL, F. and Palmer, F. Censorship in England. 

London, 1913. 
Howe, P. P. The Repertory Theatre, a Record and a 

Criticism. London, 1911. 
Lee, Sidney. Shakespeare on the Stage. London, 1906. 
McCarthy, D. The Court Theatre, 1904-1907. London, 

1907. 
Moore, G. Introduction to "The Bending of the Bough." 

London, 1900. 

Impressions and Opinions. London, 1891. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 277 

Shaw, G. B. Dramatic Opinions and Essays. London, 

1907. 
Compare Thalasso, A. Le Thedtre libre. Paris," 1909. 
See The Stage Year Book, 1904, /. 

Magazine Articles 

Archer, W. Rise of Theatrical Subventions. Fort- 
nightly Review, 79 : 127. 

Bancroft, Sir S. B. Dramatic Thoughts, Retrospec- 
tive, Anticipative. Fortnightly Review, 83 : 933. 

Beerbohm, M. Need for Morning Performances of 
Plays. Saturday Review, 92 : 428. 

Benson, F. R. A National Theatre. Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, 49 : 772. 

Fyfe, H. H. Toward a National Theatre. Fortnightly 
Review, 75 : 812. 

Jones, H. A. Recognition of Drama by the State. 
Nineteenth Century, 55 : 449. 

Moore, G. Preface to "The Bending of the Bough." 
Fortnightly Review, 73 : 317. 

Shaw, G. B. Difficulties in the Way of an Endowed 
Theatre. Saturday Review, 85 : 204. 

Chapter X. George Bernard Shaw 

Bab, J. Bernard Shaw. Berlin, 1910. 

Burton, R. Bernard Shaw, the Man and the Mask. 
New York, 1916. 

Chesterton, G. K. George Bernard Shaw. London, 
1910. 

Clark, B. H. British and American Dramatists of To- 
day. New York, 1915. 

Kale, E. E. Dramatists of To-day. New York, 191L 



278 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Hamon, a. F. The Technique of Bernard Shaw's Plays. 

Translated by F. Maurice. London, 1912. 

The Twentieth Century Moli^re. Translated by 

E. & C. Paul. London, 1915. 
Henderson, A. George Bernard Shaw, His Life and 

Works. Cincinnati, 1911. 
Howe, P. P. Bernard Shaw, a Critical Study. London, 

1915. 

Dramatic Portraits. London, 1913. 
HuNEKER, J. Iconoclasts : a Book of Dramatists. New 

York, 1905. 
Jackson, H. Bernard Shaw : a Study and an Apprecia- 
tion. London, 1907. 
McCabe, J. George Bernard Shaw. London, 1914. 
Montague, C. E. Dramatic Values. London, 1911. 
MuRET, M. Les contcmporains etrangers. Paris, 1914. 
Scott-James, R. A. Personality in Literature. London, 

1913. 
Shaw, G. B. Dramatic Opinions and Essays. London, 

1907. 

Introductions to Plays. 

The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891, 1913. 
Walkley, a. B. Drama and Life. London, 1908. 

Magazine Articles 

Chesterton, G. K. A Note on Shaw. Independent 

Review, 8 : 81. 
Dickinson, G. Lowes. Shakespeare, Ibsen and Shaw. 

Independent Review, 10 : 83. 
Howe, P. P. Dramatic Craftsmanship of Bernard Shaw 

Fortnightly Review, 100 : 132. 
MiCHAUD, R. Bernard Shaw. Revue de Paris, 5 : 165. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 279 

Rogers, A. K. Mr. Bernard Shaw's Philosophy. Hibbert 
Journal, 8 : 818. 

Chapter XI. Dramatists of the Free Theatre 

Clark, B. H. British and American Dramatists of To- 
day. New York, 1915. 

Dukes, A. Modern Dramatists. London, 1912. 

Galsworthy, J. The Inn of Tranquillity. London. 

Grein, J. T. Premieres of the Year. London, 1901. 
Dramatic Criticism. 4 Series. London, 1899-1904. 

Hankin, St. J. Dramatic Works, with Introduction by 
John Drinkwater. London, 1912. 

Herford, C. H. Essays and Studies. Oxford, 1914. 

Howe, P. P. Dramatic Portraits. London, 1913. 

The Repertory Theatre, a Record and a Criticism. 
London, 1911. 

Masefield, J. Introduction to The Tragedy of Nan. 
London. 

McCarthy, D. The Court Theatre, 1904-1907. Lon- 
don, 1907. 

Shaw, G. B. Dramatic Opinions and Essays. London, 
1907. 

Walkley, a. B. Drama and Life. London, 1908. 

Consult The Stage Year Book. London, 1904, ff. 

Magazine Articles 

Archer, W. The Theatrical Situation. Fortnightly Re- 
view, 94 : 736. 

Baughan, E. a. a Practical Repertory Theatre. 
Fortnightly Review, 95 : 298. 

Galsworthy, J. Some Platitudes Concerning Drama. 
Atlantic, 104 : 768. 



280 THE CONTEMPORARY DRAMA OF ENGLAND 

Howe, P. P. Galsworthy as a Dramatist. Fortnightly 
Review, 100 : 739. ;. 

England's New Dramatists. North American Review, 
198 : 218. 

Chapter XII. The Challenge op the Future 

Archer, W. and Barker, H. G. Scheme and Estimates 

for a National Theatre. London, 1908. 
Cannan, G. The Joy of the Theatre. London, 1914. 
Carter, H, The New Spirit in Drama and Art. New 

York, 1913. 
Craig, G. On the Art of the Theatre. Chicago, 1911. 

Toward a New Theatre. London, 1913. 
Fowell, F. and Palmer, F. Censorship in England. 

London, 1913. 
Howe, P. P. Dramatic Portraits. London, 1913. 
Moderwell, H. K. The Theatre To-day. New York, 

1914. 
Montague, C. E. Dramatic Values. London, 1911. 
Palmer, J. The Future of the Theatre. London, 1913. 
Symons, a. Plays, Acting and Music. London, 1909. 

Studies in Seven Arts. London, 1906. 
Walklet, a. B. Drama and Life. London, 1908. 

Magazine Articles 

Barker, H. G. The Theatre, the Next Phase. Forum, 

44 : 159. 
Browne, E. A. Barrie's Dramatic and Social Outlook. 

Fortnightly Review, 1906. 
Pollack, J. Censorship. Fortnightly Review, 97 : 880. 
Stoker, B, Censorship of Stage Plays. Nineteenth 

Century, 66 : 794. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 281 

Anonymous. The Triumph of the Censor. Blackwoods, 

186 : 852. 
Williams, J. D. The Charm that is Barrie. Century 

Magazine, October, 1914. 
Consult The Mask, representing the theories of Gordon 

Craig, 1907, ff; The Poetry Review, edited by Stephen 

Phillips ; Poet Lore, Boston ; The English Review, etc. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 169. 
A Beckett, Gilbert A., 70. 
Academy of Dramatic Art, 

155. 
Achurch, Janet (Mrs. Charles 

Charrington), 138, 188. 
Acis and Galatea, Handel, 

239. 
Adaptation and translation, 

Boucicault on, 7 ; vogue 

of, 30 ff. 
Adelphi Theatre, 4, 69. 
Admirable Crichton, The, 

Barrie, 226, 234. 
Affaires sont les affaires, Les, 

Mirbeau, 87. 
After Long Years, Grundy, 

87. 
Afternoon Theatre, 154. 
Albery, James, 11, 56, 68, 

69. 
Alexander, George, 149, 152, 

228. 
Alice in Wonderland, 233. 
Alice-Sit-By-the-Fire, Barrie, 

234. 
Amazons, The, Pinero, 115. 
Ambassador, The, Hobbes, 

151. 
"American" Comedy, 227. 
American Copyright Bill, 

138. 
Amusement taverns, 4. 
Anatol, Schnitzler, trans, by 

Barker, 223. 
Anderson, Mary, 77. 



Andreyev, 199. 

Androcles and the Lion, Shaw, 
199, 201, 202, 203, 226, 
236. 

Andromache, Murray, 159. 

Anne Blake, Westland Mar- 
ston, 19. 

Anne Boleyn, Taylor, 40. 

Anstey, F., 151. 

Antoine, A., 156, 158, 174. 

Archer, William, 87, 91, 134, 
155, 157, 161, 189; and 
Ibsen, 64, 139, 142; Eng- 
lish Dramatists of To-day, 
66, 67; on Pinero, 110, 
129 ; as critic, 141 ; on 
censorship, 143. 

Archer, W., and Barker, H. 
G., Scheme and Estimates 
for a National Theatre, 161. 

Arden of Feversham, 150. 

Arms and the Man, Shaw, 
165, 169, 188, 190, 200. 

Arnold, M., 62, 91, 134, 230. 

Arrah-na-Pogue, Boucicault, 
39. 

Art, nature of, 181. 

Aschenbrodel, Benedix. Adap- 
ted as School by Robertson, 
47. 

Astley's, 4. 

Athenceum, 50, 66. 

Augier, E., 42, 43, 61, 127, 
211. 

Avenue Theatre, 169, 188, 
205. 



285 



286 



INDEX 



Aylmer's Secret. Phillips, 
152. 

Bab Ballads, Gilbert, 72. 
Babil and Bijou, Boucicault, 

11. 
Badger, Richard, 161. 
Baker, Miss EUzabeth, 160, 

167, 224. 
Bakst, 236. 
Balzac, 122, 123. 
Bancroft, Sir Squire B., 44, 

49; quoted on Robertson, 

51. 
Bancroft, Marie Wilton-, 

41, 42, 44, 49, 156. 
Bancroft, Mr. and Mrs. S. 

B. and M. W., 49, 69, 71, 

110, 111, 137. 
Barker, Granville, 135, 159, 

163-168, 169, 198, 199, 

207, 220-224, 226, 230, 
236, 239. 

Barrett, Lawrence, 23. 
Barrett, Wilson, 69, 90, 96, 

137. 
Barrie, Sir J. M., 159, 167, 

208, 226, 230-235, 236. 
Batemans, 57. 
Beardsley, Aubrey, 134, 135, 

150. 

Beau Austin, Stevenson and 
Henley, 138. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 160, 
170. 

Becket, Tennyson, 28, 57. 

Becque, 141, 211, 212. 

Beerbohm, Max, 66, 134, 
207; quoted, 155 ; on 
Barrie, 233; on The Ad- 
mirable Crichton, 234. 

Beggar's Opera, Gay, 9. 

Bell, J. J., 171. 

Belle Hilhne, La, 74. 



Bellew, Kyrle, 52. 

Bells, The, Erckmann- 

Chatrian, 36, 57. 
Belphegor, Charles Webb, 35. 
Benefit of the Doubt, The, 

Jones, 125, 130, 131. 
Bennett, Arnold, 160, 168, 

208. 
Benson, F. R., 27, 152, 162. 
Bernard, William Bayle, 13. 
Bernhardt, Sarah, 61, 150. 
Bertram, Maturin, 33. 
Besier, R., 236. 
Birmingham Repertory 

Theatre, 172. 
Bishop's Move, The, Hobbes, 

151. 
Bjornson, 160. 
Blanchard, E. L., 40, 41. 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A, 

Browning, 16, 23. 
Blue Bird, The, Maeterlinck, 

168, 199, 233, 236. 
Bohemian Girl, The, bur- 
lesqued by Gilbert, 72. 
Boucicault, D. L., 11, 13, 36, 

38, 39-40, 68, 231 ; quoted 

on translation of plays, 7 ; 

on Shakespeare staging, 

27 ; on new temper of age, 

31. 
Bourgeois, 37. 
Bourgeois Tragedy, 36. 
Brand, Ibsen, 139. 
Bravo, The, 33. 
Breaking a Butterfly, Jones 

and Herman, 64. 
Brieux, 159, 212. 
Brighouse, Harold, 170, 171. 
Brisebarre and Nus, 40. 
Broken Hearts, Gilbert, 75, 

76, 79, 80. 
Brooke, Gustavus V., 27. 
Brough, William, 11. 



INDEX 



287 



Brougham, John, 11. 
Browning, Robert, 2, 15, 18, 

19-25, 192, 226. 
Bruce, a Drama, Davidson, 

146. 
Buchanan, Robert, 65, 70- 

71, 111, 137. 
Buckstone, J. B., 13, 33, 73. 
Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward, 

2, 17, 18, 36, 68. 
Bunch of Violets, A, Grundy, 

88. 
Bunty Pulls the Strings, Mof- 
fat, 224. 
Burlesque, 9, 10-11. 
Burnand, F. C, 11, 40, 41, 

68, 143. 
Business is Business, adapted 

by Grundy, 87. 
Butler, Samuel, 133, 180, 

230. 
Bygones, Pinero, 110. 
Byron, Lord George Gordon, 

quoted on drama, 1. 
Byron, H. J., 11, 15, 41, 

49, 68, 69, 77. 

Cabinet Minister, The, Pinero, 
114, 117. 

Caesar and Cleopatra, Shaw, 
188, 194, 203. 

Calumny, from El Gran Gal- 
eoto, 136. 

Camelot Series, 65, 139. 

Camille, 88, 143. 

Candida, Shaw, 164, 165, 
188, 189, 191-193, 199, 
203, 226. 

Cannan, Gilbert, 224. 

Captain Brassbound's Con- 
version, Shaw, 159, 165, 
188, 190, 191, 196, 197. 

Captain Swift, Chambers, 
150. 



Carlyle, T., on English 
drama, 1, 7. 

Carr, J. Comyns, 152. 

Carr, Dr. Osmond, 85-86. 

Carre, M., 42. 

Carton, R. C, 151, 228, 230. 

Case of Rebellious Susan, 
The, Jones, 92, 104. 

Cashel Byron's Profession, 
Shaw, 182. 

Cassilis Engagement, The, 
Hankin, 159, 219. 

Casson, Lewis, 170. 

Caste, Robertson, 46, 118, 
226. 

Cecil, Arthur, 52. 

CeUier, Alfred, 85. 

Cenci, The, SheUey, 22. 

Censorship, 5, 92, 134, 142- 
143. 

Chains, Baker, 160, 167, 224. 

Chambers, H., 150, 228, 230. 

Change, Francis, 172, 224. 

Chapin, Harold, 171, 224. 

"Character is Fate", Dic- 
tum by Novalis, 124. 

Charing Cross Theatre, 30. 

Charity, Gilbert, 54, 77. 

Charity that Began at Home, 
The, Hankin, 165, 219. 

Charles I, Wills, 57, 70. 

Charles XII, Planche, 33. 

Charrington, Charles and Ja- 
net Achurch, 138. 

Cherry Orchard, The, Tche- 
khov, 159. 

Chesterton, G. K., 135. 

Child in dramatic literature, 
The, 233. 

Christmas pantomime, 11, 
12, 235. 

Cinematograph halls, 227. 

Circuits, theatrical, 6. 

Claretie, M. Jules, 61. 



288 



INDEX 



Clariaaa Harlowe, Buchanan, 
71. 

Classifications of plays, 115, 
116. 

Claudian, Wills, 7, 70. 

Clayton, John, 52. 

Clerical Error, A, Jones, 90. 

Closet play explained, 14. 

Coghlan, C. F., 52. 

Coleridge, S. T., 76. 

Colleen Baton, Boucicault, 39. 

ColUns, WUkie, 52, 106. 

Colombe's Birthday, Brown- 
ing, 24, 25, 226. 

Coni6die Francaise, 60, 61. 

Com6die rosse, 120, 121. 

Comedy, nature of, 116; 
dominance of in English 
drama, 229. 

Comedy and Tragedy, Gilbert, 
77. 

Comedy of Love, Ibsen, 64. 

Comedy of social groups, 
102. 

Comedy Theatre, 137. 

Commercial theatre, faults 
of, 162. 

Confession scenes in Jones, 95. 

Congreve, 102, 103. 

Conrad, Joseph, 159. 

Conscrit, Le, 74. 

Continental influence on 
EngUsh drama, 211. 

Conway, H. B., 52. 

Copyright, British, 32 ; 
American, 138. 

Corsican Brothers, The, Bouci- 
cault, 34, 36, 57. 

Costume Society, The, 66, 
155. 

Cosy Couple, The, from Feuil- 
let's Le Village, 43. 

Cottage in the Air, The, Knob- 
lauch, 237. 



Courier of Lyons, The, Reade, 

36. 
Court Theatre, 30, 53, 54, 

77, 112, 114; repertory 

theatre under Vedrenne 

and Barker, 163, 164-165, 

189, 193, 224, 235. 
Cousin Kate, Davies, 229. 
Covent Garden Theatre, 2, 

3, 6, 16, 19, 34, 236. 
Craig, Gordon, 135, 146, 

236, 237-240. 
Crawfurd, Oswald, 155. 
Crime and Punishment, Dos- 

toyevsky, 71. 
Criterion Theatre, 30, 53, 55, 

112, 137. 
Criticism, 66, 134, 180-181. 
Cromwell, Hugo, 18, 34. 
Crusaders, The, Jones, 102, 

114. 
Cup, The, Tennyson, 28, 57. 
" Cup and Saucer" play, 45. 
Curel, Fran?ois de, 160. 
Cynic, The, Merivale, 70. 
Cyril's Success, Byron, 69. 

Daily Telegraph, The, 142. 

Daisy's Escape, Pinero, 110. 

Daly, Augustin, 37. 

Dancing Girl, The, Jones, 
100. 

Dandy Dick, Pinero, 114. 

Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith, Gil- 
bert, 77. 

Dark Lady of the Sonnets, 
The, Shaw, 194, 202. 

David Ballard, McEvoy, 170, 
224. 

David Garrick, Robertson, 
44. 

Davidson, John, 146. 

Davies, H. H., 229, 230. 

Dean, Basil, 171. 



INDEX 



289 



Dearths Daughter, The, 

Grundy, 89. 
Death of Marlowe, The, 

Home, 16. 
Deborah, Mosenthal, 33. 
Debt o/ Honour, A, Grundy, 

89. 
Decorator, The, a new stage 

artist, 236. 
De Dumas d, Rostand, Filon, 

120. 
Degenerates, The, Grundy, 

89. 
Delaunay, M., 61. 
Delavigne, Casimir, 34, 57. 
Dennery and Clairville, 42. 
Dennery and Clement, 42. 
Dennery and Fournier, 35. 
Desclee, Aimee, 61. 
DeviVs Disciple, The, Shaw, 

165, 188, 190, 195, 196, 

201, 203. 
Devrient, Emil, 60. 
Dickens, Charles, 7, 23, 36, 

68 ; quoted on Marie Wil- 
ton, 49 ; quoted by Charles 

Kent, 59. 
Diderot, 211. 
Diplomatists, The, Grundy, 

87. 
Discussion plays, 197. 
Distressed Mother, The, 15. 
Divided Way, The, Esmond, 

145. 
Divine Gift, The, Jones, 106. 
Doctor's Dilemma, The, Shaw, 

165, 192, 199, 201, 202, 

203. 
Doll's House, A, Ibsen, 64, 

138, 139. 
Dolly Reforming Herself, 

Jones, 106. 
Domestic drama, 9, 39. 
Don, Besier, 236. 



Don Cisar de Bazan, 34. 
Don Juan d'Autriche, De- 
lavigne, 34. 
Don Juan in Hell from Man 

and Superman, Shaw, 165. 
Doodle, Dapperwit, and 

Froth, 60. 
Dostoyevsky, 71. 
Double Marriage, The, Reade, 

41. 
Drama, advantages of for 

Shaw, 183; substance of, 

analyzed, 184-185. 
Drama at Home, The, 

Planche, 6. 
Drama Society, The, 160. 
"Dramatic Renascence ", the, 

145. 
Dramatization of novels, 68. 
Dream at Sea, The, Buck- 
stone, 33. 
Dream of Eugene Aram, The, 

57. 
Dreams, Robertson, 48. 
Drink, Reade, 41. 
Drinkwater, A. E., 159. 
Drury Lane Theatre, 2, 3, 

7, 13, 15, 16, 18, 23, 41, 

69, 136, 227. 
Duchess de la Valliere, The, 

Bulwer-Lytton, 16, 18. 
Duchess of Padua, The, Wilde, 

149. 
Duke of Meiningen, troupe 

of, 62. 
Duke of York's Theatre, 

165-167, 168, 201, 224. 
Dulcamara; or. The Little 

Duck and the Great Quack, 

Gilbert, 72. 
Dumanoir and Deimery, 34. 
Dumas, A. phre, 34, 36, 87. 
Dumas, A. fils, 61, 65, 88, 

141. 143. 



290 



INDEX 



Dunsany, Lord, 237. 
Duse, Eleanora, 237. 

Early Victorian plays and 
playwrights, 8, 12. 

Ecclesiastes, quoted by Jones, 
95. 

Echegaray, Jose, 136. 

Eighteen Nineties, The, Jack- 
son, 133. 

Eldest Son, The, Galsworthy, 
211, 216, 219. 

El Gran Galeoto, Echegaray, 
136. 

Electra, Murray, 165. 

Eliot, George, 77, 124. 

Elisir d'Amore, L', bur- 
lesqued by Gilbert, 72. 

Elizabethan Stage Society, 
160-161, 163. 

EUis, Haveloek, 64, 65. 

Emperor and Galilean, Ibsen, 
64. 

Enemy of the People, An, 
Ibsen, 65, 66, 139, 154. 

Engaged, Gilbert, 76, 78. 

English Dramatists of To-day, 
Archer, 66, 68. 

English Play Society, 160. 

Erckmann-Chatrian, 36, 57. 

Esmond, H. V., 145, 151, 
228, 230. 

Esther Waters, Moore, 160. 

Euripides, 160, 170. 

Everlasting Mercy, The, Mase- 
field, 217. 

Everyman, 160, 162. 

Extravaganza, 11. 

Fabian Society, 178. 
Faithful, The, Masefield, 236. 
Falcon, The, Tennyson, 28, 

55. 
Falscappa, 74. 



Fanny's First Play, Shaw, 

168, 200, 202, 230, 236. 
Fantasy, 119-121, 230-236. 
Farce, 9, 112, 113. 
Far From the Madding Crowd, 

Hardy, 111. 
Farr, Miss Florence, 139, 

169. 
Farren, Miss Nellie, 72. 
Fathers and Sons, Turgenev, 

210. 
Faucit, Helen, 22. 
Faust, adapted by Merivale 

as The Cynic, 70 ; by 

Gilbert as Gretchen, 77. 
Faust, Phillips and Carr, 152. 
Favart, M., 61. 
Fechter, Charles, 27, 34, 60. 
Feuillet, Octave, 42, 88. 
Feval, M., 37. 
Fielding, Henry, 68, 71. 
Figlia del Reggimento, La, 

burlesqued by Gilbert, 72. 
Filon, A., quoted, 120, 129, 

230. 
Fitzball, Edward, 13, 36, 97. 
Fitzgerald, Percy, 143. 
Flaubert, Gustave, 238. 
Fly-leaf, The, issued by 

Charles Kean, 26. 
FooVs Paradise, A, Grundy, 

88, 89. 
FooVs Revenge, The, Taylor, 

35. 
Foote, Lydia, 52. 
Foote, Samuel, 3. 
Ford, John, 160. 
Foreign troupes in London, 

60. 
Forget-Me-Not, Merivale, 70. 
Fortnightly Review, 64, 66, 

142, 157, 161, 188. 
Foundations of a National 

Drama, Jones, 92. 



INDEX 



291 



Fox, S. M., 224. 

Francis, J. O., 160, 172, 224. 

Fraud and its Victims, 37. 
Freeing of the Theatres, The, 

2-6. 
Free Theatres in England, 

155-157. 
Freie Biihne, 155. 
French influence, 8, 32, 37. 
French Play in London, The, 

Arnold, 62. 
Freres Corses, Les, adapted 

by Boucicault, 36. 
Frocks and Frills, Grundy, 

87. 
Frohman, Charles, 167, 231 • 

quoted, 166. 
Frou Frou, 88, 143. 
Fugitive, The, Galsworthy, 

216. 
Fun, edited by H. J. Byron, 

72. 
Fyfe, H., quoted, 109. 

Gaiety Theatre, 30, 61, 169- 

171. 
Galsworthy, John, 99, 155, 

165, 167, 208, 210, 212- 

216, 220, 226, 236 ; quoted, 

214. 
Garrick Theatre, 125. 
Gay Lord Quex, The, Pinero, 

101, 121, 122, 226. 
Genlis, Mme. le, 72. 
Genre serieux, 211, 229. 
George, Mile., 35. 
German Theatre Company, 

160. 
Getting Married, Shaw, 165, 

201. 
Ghosts, Ibsen, 65, 125, 139, 

157. 
Ghosts and Gibberings, Archer, 

142. 



Gilbert, W. S., 40, 52, 68, 71, 

72-86, 101, 110, 119, 121, 

125, 138, 226, 230 ; quoted 

on Robertson, 51 ; quoted 

on humor, 86. 
Gilbert, William, 72. 
Glass of Fashion, The, 

Grundy, 88, 89. 
Globe Theatre, 30, 110. 
God and the Man, Buchanan, 

71. 
Gods of the Mountain, The, 

Dunsany, 237. 
Goethe, quoted, 62, 144. 
Gogol, 160. 
Golden Fleece, The, Planch6, 

11. 
Goldsmith, 68, 110, 160, 

170. 
Gondoliers, The; or. The 

King of Barataria, Gilbert, 

15. 
Gorky, 159. 
Gosse, E., 64. 
Got, M., 61. 
Grand Duke, The, Gilbert, 

86. 
Great Catherine, The, Shaw, 

194. 
Great Divorce Case, The, 

112. 
Great War, The, 225. 
Greatest of These, The, 

Grundy, 89, 145. 
Gregory, Lady, 174. 
Green, Mrs. J. R., 157. 
Greet, Ben, 161. 
Grein, John T., 138, 156- 

158, 188. 
Gretchen, Gilbert, 75, 77. 
Grierson's Way, Esmond, 151. 
Grundy, Sydney, 68, 71, 86- 

89, 124, 137, 138, 141, 

145. 



292 



INDEX 



Hal6vy, 141. 

Hamlet, 57, 58; 1st quarto, 

160, 161. 
Handel, 239. 
Hankin, St. John, 159, 165, 

210, 218-219, 230. 
Hannele, Hauptmann, 154. 
Hannetons, Les, Brieux, 159. 
Hansel and Gretel, 154. 
Happy Land, The, Gilbert, 

80. 
Harbour Lights, The, Sims 

and Pettitt, 69. 
Hard Struggle, A, Marston, 

19. 
Hardy, Thomas, 111, 157; 

quoted, 244. 
Hare, John, 44, 52, 53, 54, 

55, 58, 110, 125; quoted 

on Robertson, 51. 
HarUquinade, 12, 235. 
Harold, Tennyson, 28. 
Harris, Augustus, 53, 137. 
Harris, Frank, 66, 157. 
Harrison, Frederick, 137, 228. 
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 160. 
Haymarket Theatre, 3, 30, 

44, 53, 54, 65, 69, 73, 78, 87, 

100, 110, 111, 137, 149, 

165, 166, 168, 188, 224. 
HazUtt, Wm., quoted, 26. 
Hedda Gabler, Ibsen, 139. 
Heijermanns, 160. 
Helena's Path, Hope and 

Lennox, 167. 
Henderson, Alexander, 112. 
Henderson, Isaac, 151. 
Hennequin and Delaeour, 

69. 
Henry III, Dumas, pbre, 34. 
Herbert, Miss, 72. 
Herman, Henry, 90, 96, 137. 
Hernani, Hugo, 34. 
Herod, PhiUips, 152. 



Hero of Romance, A, Mars- 
ton, 43. 

Hervieu, Paul, 212. 

Hester's Mystery, P*inero, 110. 

Hewlett, Maurice, 165. 

High comedy, early Vic- 
torian, 9. 

Hindle Wakes, Houghton, 
170, 211, 216, 219. 

Hippolytus, Murray, 165. 

His Excellency, Gilbert, 85. 

His House in Order, Pinero, 
101, 131. 

His Majesty's Theatre, 137. 

Historical Comedy, 118. 

H. M. S. Pinafore; or. 
The Lass that Loved a 
Sailor, 82. 

Hobbes, John Oliver (Mrs. 
Craigie), 151. 

Hobby Horse, The, Pinero, 
55, 114, 117. 

Holborn Theatre, 30. 

HolUngshead, Mr., manages 
French tour, 61. 

HoUingsworth, Mr., man- 
ager of melodrama, 53. 

Home, Robertson, 48. 

Home Secretary, The, Carton, 
151. 

Hood, Tom, 46, 80. 

Hoodman Blind, Jones, 98. 

Hooligan, The, Gilbert, 73. 

Hope, Anthony, and Cosmo 
Gordon Lennox, 167. 

Home, R. H., 16; quoted on 
Virginius, 17. 

Horniman, Miss A. E. F., 
169-171, 173. 

Houghton, Stanley, 160, 170, 
200, 219-220. 

"House-in-order" play, 101. 

Housman and Barker, Prur 
nella, 165, 167, 223, 235. 



INDEX 



293 



How he Lied to Her Husband, 

Shaw, 178, 200. 
Hugo, Victor, 18, 34, 35, 37. 
Hypocrites, The, Joues, 101, 

106. 

Ibsen in England, 64-67, 

93, 130, 136, 138-142, 

164, 186, 189, 192, 208, 

211, 233. 
Ibsen's Ghost, Barrie, 233. 
Ideal Husband, An, Wilde, 

148, 149. 
Ideal, The, as substance of 

drama, 184. 
Importance of Being Earnest, 

Wilde, 149. 
Impressions and Opinions, 

Moore, 156. 
In a Balcony, Browning, 24. 
In Chancery, Pinero, 114. 
Incorporated Stage Society, 

158-160, 163, 171. 
Independence, Pinero, 114. 
Independent Theatre, 65, 

138, 139, 142, 156-158, 188. 
In Honour Bound, Grundy, 

87, 124. 
Interieur, U, Maeterlinck, 

158. 
Intruder, The, Maeterlinck, 

138, 158. 
lolanthe; or. The Peer and 

the Peri, Gilbert, 83. 
Ion, Talfourd, 15, 19. 
Iris, Pinero, 125, 126, 131, 

132. 
Irish Essays, Arnold, 62. 
Irish National Theatre, 169, 

173-175. 
Ironmaster, The, Pinero, 55, 

111. 
Irrational Knot, The, Shaw, 

182. 



Irving, Sir Henry, 27, 36, 

53, 56-59, 67, 110, 137. 
Ivy Hall, Oxenford, 43. 

Jackson, Holbrook, 133. 

Jack Straw, Maugham, 229. 

Jacob and Esau, 160. 

James, David, 52. 

Jane Eyre, Wills, 70. 

Japanese influence, 236. 

Jerrold, Douglas, 7, 12, 40; 
quoted on Browning, 20. 

Joan of Arc, Taylor, 40. 

Jones, H. A., 55, 64, 68, 69, 
77, 88, 91-107, 108, 114, 
130, 132, 134, 137, 138, 
140, 141, 145, 157, 213, 
216, 226, 228, 230 ; quoted, 
54. 

John a' Dreams, Chambers, 
151. 

John Bull's Other Island, 
Shaw, 165, 199-200. 

John Glayde's Honour, Sutro, 
228. 

Jonathan Bradford; or. The 
Murder at the Roadside 
Inn, Fitzball, 42, 97. 

Jonson, Ben, 160, 170. 

Joseph Entangled, Jones, 106. 

Joseph's Sweetheart, Bu- 
chanan, 71. 

Journal of a London Play- 
goer, Morley, 60. 

Journal of Dramatic Reform, 
66. 

Journeys end in Lovers' Meet- 
ing, Hobbes and Moore, 
151. 

Joy, Galsworthy, 165, 215. 

Juana, Wills, 70. 

Judah, Jones, 90, 99, 103. 

Justice, Galsworthy, 167, 214, 
215-216. 



294 



INDEX 



Kammer Sanger, Der, Wede- 

kind, 159. 
Kean, Charles, 6, 24, 25, 59. 
Kemble's King John, 13, 26. 
Kendal, Mrs. (Madge Rob- 
ertson), 50, 52, 66, 110. 
Kendal, Mr. and Mrs., 53, 

54, 55, 87, 137. 
Kent, Charles, 59. 
King's Rival, A, Taylor and 

Reade, 35, 40. 
King Victor and King Charles, 

Browning, 23. 
Kipling, 233. 
Kismet, Knoblauch, 237. 
Kiss, The, Theodore de 

Banville, 157. 
Knoblauch, Edward, 237. 
Knowles, James Sheridan, 7, 

16, 17. 
Kotzebue, 111. 

Labiche, 42, 87, 112. 

Labrousse, 34. 

Ladies' Battle, The, Reade, 

41. 
Lady Bountiful, Pinero, 120. 
Lady Clare, Buchanan, 71. 
Lady Frederick, Maugham, 

229. 
Lady from the Sea, The, 

Ibsen, 139, 159. 
Lady Gorringe's Necklace, 

Davies, 229. 
Lady of Lyons, The, Bulwer- 

Lytton, 16, 18. 
Lady Patricia, Besier, 237. 
Lady Windermere's Fan, 

Wilde, 148, 149. 
Land of Heart's Desire, The, 

Yeats, 226. 
Land of Promise, The, 

Maugham, 229. 
Land Reform Union, 179. 



Last of the DeMullins, The, 

Hankin, 211, 219. 
Lea, Miss Marion, 139. 
League of Youth, The, Ibsen, 

159. 
Leaves from a Dramatist's 

Diary, Boucicault, 39. 
Lee, Sidney, 162. 
Legend of Leonora, The, 

Barrie, 235. 
Legouve, 34. 
Leigh, J. H., 163. 
Leighton, Dorothy, 158. 
Lemaltre, Frederick, 34, 35. 
Lemon, Mark, 13, 40. 
Leity, Pinero, 117, 119. 
Lewes, G. H., 59. 
Liars, The, Jones, 105. 
"Life Force", The, 180, 192, 

203. 
Life's Ransom, A, Marston, 

19. 
Lights o' London, The, Sims, 

37, 69, 97. 
LiUo, 36. 

Lincoln's Inn Fields, 9. 
Little Dream, The, Gals- 
worthy, 216, 233, 234, 236. 
Little Theatre, The, 168. 
Liverpool Repertory Theatre, 

171. 
London Assurance, Bouci- 
cault, 13, 39, 52. 
London Life, 37. 
London melodrama, 37. 
Lord, Miss H. F., 64. 
Lord and Lady Algy, Carton, 

151. 
Lord of the Manor, The, 

Merivale, 70. 
Lords and Commons, Pinero, 

111. 
Louis XI, Delavigne, 34, 

57. 



INDEX 



295 



Louis XIV, Labrousse, 34. 
Love Among the Artists, Shaw, 

182. 
Lower Depths, The, 159. 
Low Water, Pinero, 111. 
Lugne-Poe, M., 158. 
Luria, Browning, 25. 
Lyceum Theatre, 28, 57, 66, 

70, 73, 77, 110, 1G3. 
Lyons Mail, The, 36, 57. 
Lytton, Edward Bulwer-. See 

Bulwer-Lytton. 
Lytton, Marie, 77. 

Macbeth, 57. 

McEvoy, Charles, 170, 224. 
McLeod, Fiona, 160. 
Maeready, W. C, 2, 6, 15, 

19, 22, 23, 25. 
Madame U Archiduc, 74. 
Madras House, The, Barker, 

167, 198, 222-223. 
MaeterUnck, M., 138, 146, 

150, 165, 199, 233, 236. 
Magazines and Drama, 66. 
Magistrate, The, Pinero, 114. 
Maison neuve, Sardou, 111. 
Maitre de Forges, Le, Ohnet, 

71, 111. 

Major Barbara, Shaw, 165, 

200, 202. 
Mammon, Grundy, 100. 
Man and Superman, Shaw, 

165, 189, 192, 196, 197- 

199, 203, 226. 
Man and Wife, Collins, 52. 
Manchester Repertory Thea- 
tre, 169-171, 224. 
Man from Blankleys, The, 

Anstey, 151. 
Man of Destiny, The, Shaw, 

165, 188, 193. 
Man of Honour, A, Maugham, 

159. 



Mannen of Bord och Qvinnan 

af Folket, Schwartz, 111. 
Manners as substance of 

plays, 184. 
Manoeuvres of Jane, The, 

Jones, 105. 
Mansfield, Richard, 189, 193. 
Maquet, M., 41. 
Mariage d'Olympe, Le, 

Augier, 127. 
Marie de Meranie, Marston, 

19. 
Marino Faliero, Delavigne, 

34. 
Marlowe, C, 160. 
Marrying of Anne Leete, The, 

Barker, 221, 226. 
Marston, J. Westland, 18- 

19, 68. 
Martyn, Edward, 174. 
Marylebone Gardens, 4, 10. 
Masefleld, John, 165, 216- 

218, 226, 236; quoted on 

tragedy, 217. 
Mask, The, 240. 
Masks and Faces, Taylor and 

Reade, 40, 41, 52. 
Masque of Love, The, Purcell, 

239. 
Masqueraders, The, Jones, 

103, 105, 226. 
Master Builder, The, Ibsen, 

139, 158. 
Mathews, Charles, 161. 
Matinees, 155. 
Maude, Cyril, 137, 188, 194. 
Maugham, Somerset, 159, 

228, 229, 230. 
Maupassant, 144. 
Mausoleum of Ibsen, The, 

Archer, 142. 
May fair, Pinero, 55, 111. 
Medea, Murray, 165. 
Medea in Corinth, Wills, 70. 



296 



INDEX 



Meilhac and Halevy, 74, 88. 
Melodrama, 8, 33, 36, 68, 70, 

96. 
Merchant of Venice, The, 57. 
Meredith, George, 157, 167, 

208, 230, 231. 
Merivale, H. C, 68. 
Merritt, Paul, 37, 68. 
Merritt, P., and Pettitt, 

Henry, 69. 
Merry Zingara, Gilbert, 72. 
Michael and his Lost Angel, 

Jones, 96, 101, 105, 145. 
Mid-Channel, Pinero, 125, 

131-132, 216. 
Middleman, The, Jones, 98. 
Middleton, 160. 
Midsummer Night's Dream, 

82. 
Mikado, The; or, The Town 

of Titipu, Gilbert, 82, 84. 
Milestones, Bennett, 168, 211. 
Milton, John, 160. 
*' Mind the Paint" Girl, The, 

Pinero, 123. 
Minor theatres, 4. 
Minority theatres, 134, 135, 

144, 167, 205-207. 
Miracle, The, 236. 
Mirbeau, Octave, 87, 
Misalliance, Shaw, 167, 201. 
Miserables, Les, Hugo, 37, 

97. 
Miss Tomboy, Buchanan, 71. 
Mob, The, Galsworthy, 214, 

216. 
Modjeska, Mme., 50, 70. 
Moffat, G., 224. 
Moliere, 160, 176, 184. 
Mollusc, The, Davies, 229. 
"Monday Nights", 138, 154. 
Money Spinner, The, Pinero, 

55, 110. 
Monkhouse, Allen, 171. 



Monopoly theatres, 2, 3, 5. 
Monro, Neil, 171. 
Monster Play, The, 35. 
Monte Cnsto, 34, 60, 97. 
Montjoye, Feuillet, 88. 
Moore, George, 138, 156, 

157, 159, 174. 
Morality Play Society, The, 

160. 
More Bab Ballads, Gilbert, 

72. 
Morley, Henry, 59. 
Morris, William, 134, 158. 
Morton, J. Maddison, 13. 
Mosenthal, 33. 
Moser, von, 112. 
Mountebank, The, 35. 
Mountebanks, The, Gilbert, 

85, 86. 
M. P., Robertson, 48. 
Mrs. Dane's Defence, Jones, 

106, 130. 
Mrs. Dot, Maugham, 229. 
Mrs. Warren's Profession, 

Shaw, 188, 189, 190. 
Much Ado About Nothing, 57. 
Mummy and the Humming 

Bird, The, Henderson, 151. 
Murray, Gilbert, 159, 165. 
Music halls, 227. 
Musset, 28. 
Mystbres de Londres, F6val, 

37. 
Mysteries of Paris, Sue, 36. 

National theatre, a, 134, 

161-162. 
Nero, Phillips, 152. 
Nethersole, Olga, 125. 
New Magdalen, The, Collins, 

106. 
New Men and Old Acres, 

Taylor and Dubourg, 54. 
New Review, The, 92. 



INDEX 



297 



Nineteenth Century, The, 62, 

92. 
Nineties, The movements of 

the, 133-153. 
Noble Vagabond, The, Jones, 

98. 
Nora, translation of A Doll's 

House, by Miss Lord, 64. 
Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, 

The, Pinero, 125, 129, 130. 
Notre Dame de Paris, Bour- 
geois, 37. 
Novalis, 124. 
Novelists as playwrights, 

207-208. 

Octoroon, The, Boucicault, 

40. 
Odd Man Out, The, Brig- 
house, 170. 
Offenbach operas, 74. 
Ohnet, George, 71, 111. 
Old Friends, Barrie, 167, 235. 
Old Heads and Young Hearts, 

Boucicault, 39. 
Olivia, Wills, 70. 
Olympic Theatre, 4, 72. 
On Actors and the Art of 

Acting, Lewes, 60. 
Oncomers Society, 160. 
One Day More, Conrad, 159. 
Only Round the Corner, Jones, 

90. 
Op^ra Comique, 30, 60, 82. 
Organization of the theatre, 

the new, 154-175. 
Oriana, Albery, 11, 69. 
Oriental motives, 236. 
Oscar, ou le mari qui trompe 

sa femme, Scribe and Du- 

vergne, 87. 
Othello, 51. 
Our Boys, Byron, 69. 
Ours, Robertson, 45. 



Outcast, Davies, 229. 
Overland Route, The, Taylor, 

40. 
Oxenford, John, 13, 43. 
Oxford Dramatic Society, 66. 

Paillasse, Dennery and Four- 
nier, 35. 

Pair of Spectacles, A, Grundy, 
87. 

Palace of Truth, The, Gil- 
bert, 72, 76, 79. 

Palais de la Virite, Le, 
Genlis, 72. 

Pall Mall Gazette, The, 142, 
157. 

Pantaloon, Barrie, 235. 

Pantomime, Christmas, 11, 
12, 235 ; prologue on pan- 
tomime, 146. 

Paolo and Francesca, Phillips, 
152, 153. 

Parisienne, La, Becque, 141. 

Parliamentary Committee, 
report on state of the 
theatre, 7. 

Passers-by, Chambers, 151. 

Patent theatres, 2 ff. 

Pater, Walter, quoted, 74. 

Patience; or, Bunthorne's 
Bride, Gilbert, 83, 84. 

Patrician's Daughter, The, 
Marston, 18, 19. 

Pauvres de Paris, Les, adapted, 
37. 

Paijne, Mr. B. Iden, 170. 

Peer Gynt, Ibsen, 64. 

Pelleas et Melisande, Maeter- 
linck, 158. 

Perrin, M., 61. 

Peter Pan, Barrie, 226, 233, 
236. 

Petits Oiseaux, Les, Labiche 
and Delaoour, 87. 



298 



INDEX 



Pettitt, Henry, 37. 

Phelps, Samuel, 6, 23, 26. 

Philanderer, The, Shaw, 165, 
188, 189, 190. 

Philip van Artevelde, Sir 
Henry Taylor, 16. 

Phillips, Stephen, 137, 138, 
151-153. 

Pielro of Siena, Phillips, 152. 

Pigeon, The, Galsworthy, 
216, 236, 237. 

Pilgrim's Scrip, The, Mere- 
dith, quoted from, 95. 

Pillars of Society, Ibsen, 64, 
98, 138, 139, 159. 

Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing, 52, 
53, 68, 88, 101, 108-132, 
137, 138, 141, 157, 167, 
176, 213, 216, 222, 226, 
228, 230. 

Pink Dominoes, Albery, 69, 
112, 143. 

Pippa Passes, Browning, 25. 

Pirates of Penzance, The; or. 
The Slave of Duty, Gilbert, 
82, 196. 

Planche, J. R., 6, 11, 12, 
13, 26. 

Play Actors, The, 160. 

Play of Ideas, The, 123. 

Play, Robertson, 47. 

Playgoers Club, The, 92. 

Playgoers, The, Pinero, 123. 

Playhouse, The, 224. 

Plays for "Free" theatres, 
206. 

Plays for Puritans, Shaw, 
189. 

Plays Pleasant and Unpleas- 
ant, Shaw, 189. 

Plot and Passion, Taylor, 40. 

Poel, William, 160-161. 

Poudre aux Yeux, La, La- 
biohe, 87. 



Power of Darkness, The, Tol- 
stoi, 159. 

Preserving Mr. Panmure, 
Pinero, 123. 

Press Cuttings, Shaw, 202. 

Prince of Wales's Theatre, 
41, 46, 48, 49, 50-53, 77, 

Princess and the Butterfly, 
The, Pinero, 120, 121. 

Princess Ida; or, Castle Ada- 
mant, Gilbert, 84. 

Princess, The, Tennyson, 72, 
84. 

Princess's Theatre, 6, 26, 96. 

I*rinting of plays, 138, 139. 

Prisoner of Zenda, The, Hope, 
146. 

Professor's Love Story, The, 
Barrie, 233. 

Profligate, The, Pinero, 55, 
87, 112, 114, 123-127. 

Promise of May, The, Tenny- 
son, 28. 

Prunella, Housman and 
Barker, 165, 167, 223, 235. 

Publication of plays, 138, 
139, 177. 

Puck of Pook's Hill, Kipling, 
233. 

Punch, 41, 72. 

Puppets, theory of, 238. 

Purcell, 239. 

Pygmalion and Galatea, Gil- 
bert, 54, 76, 79. 

Pygmalion, Shaw, 199, 203. 

Quality Street, Barrie, 234. 
Quarterly Review, quoted, 5. 
Queen Mary, Tennyson, 28, 

57. 
Queen's Theatre, 30, 72, 165. 

Raleigh, Cecil, 157. 

Rates and Taxes, Christmas 



INDEX 



299 



Annual edited by Tom 
Hood, 46. 

Ray, Miss, 64. 

Reade, Charles, 36, 40, 68. 

Reality as substance of a 
play, 184. 

Rector, The, Pinero, 111. 

Reinbardt, Max, 236, 239. 

Relapse, The, Vanbrugh, 71. 

Renascence of the English 
Drama, The, Jones, 92. 

Repentance, A, Hobbes, 151. 

Repertory Theatre Associa- 
tion, The, 172. 

Repertory Theatre, the, 162, 
167, 168, 172 ; in the prov- 
inces, 168-175 ; influence 
on popular drama, 227. 

Return of the Druses, The, 
Browning, 23. 

Return of the Prodigal, The, 
Hankin, 165. 

Revelations of London, 37. 

Rewards and Fairies, Kip- 
ling, 233. 

Richard III, 57. 

Richelieu, Bulwer-Lytton, 16, 
18, 57.. 

Richepin, M., 151. 

"Right to life" motive in 
plays, 100, 201-202. 

Rigoletto, 35. 

Riquet with the Tuft, Planohe, 
11. 

Ristori, Mme., 61. 

Rivals, The, 52, 54, 162. 

Robert Macaire, Selby, 34. 

Robertson, Sir J. Forbes, 125, 
194. 

Robert the Devil, burlesqued 
by Gilbert, 72. 

Robertson, Madge. See Ken- 
dal, Mrs. 

Robertson, Thomas William, 



42-48, 51, 68, 117, 118, 

119, 226; quoted on state 

of actresses, 7. 
Robertson, T. W., the 

younger, 137. 
Robins, Elizabeth, 139. 
Rocket, The, Pinero, 113. 
Rogue's Comedy, The, Jones, 

103. 
Roi s' amuse, Le, Hugo, 35. 
Romantic plays, 8. 
Romantic tradition, decline 

of, 14-29. 
Romeo and Juliet, 57. 
Rorke, Kate, 125. 
Rosencranz and Guildenstern, 

Gilbert, 77. 
Rosmersholm, Ibsen, 125, 139, 

178. 
Rostand, Edmond, 152, 235. 
Rothenstein, A., 236. 
Royalty Theatre, 168. 
Ruddigore; or. The Witches 

Curse, Gilbert, 85. 
Ruskin, John, 7, 134. 
Russian BaUet, 236. 
Rutherford and Son, Sowerby, 

211, 224. 
Ruy Bias, 34. 

Sadler's Wells Theatre, 23, 

26. 
St. James's Theatre, 35, 53, 

54, 55, 72, 110, 149. 
Saints and Sinners, Jones, 

90, 92, 96, 97, 101, 140. 
Sakuntala, 160. 
Salome, Wilde, 150. 
Sarcey, M., 141. 
Sardou, Victorien, 111, 141. 
Saturday Review, The, 66, 

155, 181. 
Savoy Theatre, 30, 83, 137, 

165-166. 



300 



INDEX 



Scaramouch in Naxos, David- 
son, 146. 

SchiUer, 160. 

' ' Schimpf lexikon ' ' of abuse 
ou Ibsen, Archer, 142. 

Schnitzler, 160, 223. 

School for Scandal, 52, 54. 

Schoolmistress, The, Pinero, 
114. 

School of Dramatic Art, A, 66. 

School, Robertson, 47. 

Schwartz, Marie Sophie, 111. 

Scots' Observer, The, 181. 

Scott, Clement, 65, 141; 
quoted, 46, 52, 142. 

Scott, Sir Walter, drama- 
tization of, 68. 

Scottish Repertory Theatre, 
171. 

Scribe and Duvergne, 87. 

Scribe and Legouve, 42, 87. 

Scribe, E., 37, 42, 88, 124. 

Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The, 
Pinero, 88, 123, 125, 127- 
129, 131, 132. 

Selby, Charles, 34. 

Sensation dramas, 39. 

Sentimental oomedy, 117, 
118. 

Sentimentalists, The, Esmond, 
151. 

Sentimentalists, The, Mere- 
dith, 167. 

Serious drama, limitations 
of, 115, 116. 

Sex in modem drama, 100. 

Shakespeare, 14, 27, 160, 
163, 170, 176, 184, 195. 

Shakespeare Festival, An- 
nual, 155. 

Shakespeare Memorial Thea- 
tre at Stratford, 161, 162. 

Shakespeare Reading Society, 
160. 



Sharp, R., Farquharson, 65. 

Sharp, William, 135, 146; 
quoted, 135. 

Shaugraun, The, Boucicault, 
40. 

Shaw, George Bernard, 58, 
65, 66, 79, 135, 138, 155, 
157, 159, 164, 165, 167, 
168, 169, 176-204, 207, 
213, 220, 226, 230, 236; 
Shaw and Revolt, 177- 
178 ; Shaw's test of truth, 
177 ; Shaw's wit, 187. 

Shelley, 22. 

Sheridan, 170, 176. 

She Stoops to Conquer, 110. 

Shewing-wp of Blanco Posnet, 
The, Shaw, 190, 196, 199, 
201, 202, 204. 

Sign of the Cross, The, Bar- 
rett, 69, 146. 

Silas Marner, 77. 

Silver Box, The, Galsworthy, 
165, 214-215, 226. 

Silver King, The, Jones and 
Herman, 69, 90, 96,-97. 

Simpson, J. Palgrave, 11, 
72-73. 

Sims and Pettitt, 69. 

Sims, George R., 37, 68, 
69, 86, 137, 157. 

Sin of David, The, Phillips, 
152, 153. 

Sixth Commandment, The, 
Buchanan, 71. 

Sleeping Beauty, The, 
Planehe, 11. 

Smith, a Tragic Farce, David- 
son, 146. 

Snowball, The, Grundy, 87. 

Social aspects of the theatre, 
62, 63, 91, 134. 

Social Democratic Federa- 
tion, 178. 



INDEX 



301 



Social motive in plays out- 
worn, 209. 

Society, Robertson, 44, 45, 
56, 118. 

Society dramas, 39. 

Sophia, Buchanan, 71. 

Sophisticated comedy, 121. 

Sorcerer, The, Gilbert, 81, 82. 

Soul's Tragedy, A, Brown- 
ing, 25. 

Sowerby, Githa, 224. 

Sowing the Wind, Grxindy, 
89, 137. 

Squire, The, Pinero, 55, 110, 
111. 

Star, The, 181. 

State and the Theatre, The, 
62, 63, 91, 92, 134. 

Stevenson and Henley, 138. 

Still Waters Run Deep, Tay- 
lor, 40. 

Stockport Garrick Society, 60. 

Storm Beaten, Buchanan, 71. 

Strafford, Browning, 16, 19, 
22, 23, 226. 

Strand Theatre, 41. 

Stranger, The, Kotzebue, 111. 

Strathmore, Marston, 19. 

Streets of London, The, 37. 

Strife, Galsworthy, 99, 155, 
165, 214, 215. 

Strike at Arlingford, The, 
Moore, 157, 174. 

Strindberg, 160. 

Substance of plays classified, 
184. 

Sudermann, 160. 

SuUivan, Sir Arthiu", 81. 

Sumurun, 236. 

Surrey Gardens, 4. 

Sutro, Alfred, 228. 

Swanborough, Miss, 49. 

Sweet Lavender, Pinero, 114, 
118. 



Sweethearts, Gilbert, 75, 77. 
Symons, Arthur, 71, 157. 
Synge, J. M., 135, 174, 226. 

Taken from Life, 97. 

Tale of Mystery, A, Holcraft, 

33. 
Tale of Two Cities, A, 

Dickens, 70. 
Talfourd, Francis, 11. 
Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 19. 
Talking characters, 185. 
Tante, Chambers, 151. 
Taylor and Dubourg, 54. 
Taylor, Sir Henry, 16. 
Taylor, Tom, 35, 40. 
Tchekhov, 159, 199, 221. 
Technique of recent plays, 

209. 
Tempter, The, Jones, 101. 
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 19, 

27-29, 55, 57, 72, 84. 
Terriss, William, 52. 
Terry, Edward, 112, 113. 
Terry, Ellen, 50, 52, 57, 193, 

197. 
Thackeray, W. M., 7, 8, 12, 

43, 46, 68, 117. 
Theatre building, increase in, 

30. 
Theatre Historique, 60. 
Theatre Libre, 155, 156, 174. 
The Theatre, 66, 141. 
Therese Raquin, Zola, 157. 
Thespis ; or. The Gods from 

Old, Gilbert, 81. 
Thunderbolt, The, Pinero, 122, 

132, 222, 226. 
Thyrza Fleming, Dorothy 

Leighton, 158. 
Ticket of Leave Man, The, 

Taylor, 40. 
Times, The, Pinero, 118. 
Times, The, London, 142. 



302 



INDEX 



Tolstoi, 136, 138, 159. 
Tom Cobh, Gilbert, 78. 
Tomline, F. L., pseudonym 

of Gilbert, 73. 
Toole, J. L., 72. 
Topsy-turvydom, Gilbert, 75. 
Toynbee, Arnold, 134. 
Trafalgar Square Theatre, 

139. 
Tragedy, 116, 117, 124; de- 
fined by Masefield, 217. 
Tragedy of Nan, The, Mase- 
field, 165, 217, 218, 226. 
TraiU, H. D., quoted, 133. 
Tree of Knowledge, The, Car- 
ton, 151. 
Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm, 
53, 65, 66, 100, 137, 138, 
149, 152, 154, 158, 172, 
228. 
Trelawney of the "Wells", 
Pinero, 12, 118, 167, 226. 
Trench, H., 168. 
Trial by Jury, Gilbert, 73, 

81, 82. 
Trilby, 146. 
Triumph of the Philistines, 

The, Jones, 95, 102. 
Trojan Women, The, Murray, 

165. 
Truth, 141, 142. 
Turgenev, 210, 212. 
Twelfth Night, 195. 
Twelve Pound Look, The, 

Barrie, 167, 235. 
ITwixt Axe and Crown, Tay- 
lor, 40. 
Two Hundred a Year, Pinero, 

110. 
Two Loves and a Life, Taylor 

and Reade, 40. 
Two Mr. Wetherbys, The, 

Hankin, 159, 219. 
Two Roses, Albery, 56, 69. 



Tyranny of Tears, The, 
Chambers, 151. 

Ueber-marionette, 239. 
Ulysses, Phillips, 152. 
Under the Gaslight, Daly, 37. 
Under the Red Robe, 146. 
Unearned increment of fame, 

the, 193. 
Une Chdine, Scribe, 124. 
Unequal Match, The, Taylor, 

40. 
Unhappy endings of plays, 

88, 98, 100, 102, 112, 125- 

126, 132. 
Unsocial Socialist, The, Shaw, 

182. 
Utopia, Limited; or. The 

Flowers of Progress, Gil- 
bert, 85. 

Vanbrugh, 71. 

VaudeviUe Theatre, 30, 97. 

Vauxhall, 4. 

Vedrenne and Barker, 164- 

166, 189. 
Vedrenne and Eadie, 168. 
Vedrenne, Mr., 163. 
Vera; or. The Nihilists, 

Wilde, 149. 
Verse plays, 8. 
Vicarage, The, a Fireside 

Story, 43. 
Victoria, Queen, 2, 7, 225. 
Victoria Theatre, 69. 
Visit, A, Brandes, 157. 
Vistas, Sharp, 146. 
Vivandibre, La, Gilbert, 72. 
Voysey Inheritance, The, 
Barker, 165, 211, 222. 

Walden, Lord Howard de, 

172. 
Walkley, A. B., 65, 157; 

quoted, 188. 



INDEX 



303 



Waller, Lewis, 125, 149. 
Walls of Jericho, The, Sutro, 

228. 
War, Robertson, 48. 
Waring, Herbert, 139. 
War of the critics, 65, 140. 
Waste, Barker, 159, 222. 
Way of All Flesh, The, Butler, 

133. 
Way of the World, The, Con- 

greve, 103. 
Weaker Sex, The, Pinero, 112. 
Wealth, Jones, 98-99. 
Webb, Charles, 35. 
Wedekind, F., 159. 
Wedmore, Frederick, quoted, 

129. 
"Well-made" play, 37. 
Welsh National Theatre, 172. 
What Every Woman Knows, 

Barrie, 234. 
Whelen, Frederick, 158, 159, 

168. 
When We Dead Awaken, 

Ibsen, 159. 
When We Were Twenty-one, 

Esmond, 151. 
White Pilgrim, The, Merivale, 

70. 
Whitewashing Julia, Jones, 

106. 
Wicked World, The, Gilbert, 

54, 76, 79, 80. 
Widowers' Houses, Shaw, 157, 

188, 189. 
Widow in the Bye Street, The, 

Masefield, 217. 
Widow of Wasdale Head, The, 

Pinero, 123. 
Wife Without a Smile, A, 

Pinero, 123. 



Wilde, Oscar, 83, 134, 135, 

137, 138, 146-150, 218, 

230. 
Wilhelm Meister's Appren- 
ticeship, 70. ^ 
Wilkinson, Norman, 236. 
WiUard, E. S., 53. 
Wills, W. G., 7, 57, 68, 69, 

70, 101, 137. 
Wilton, Marie. iSee Bancroft, 

Mrs. Marie Wilton.' 
Windsor Theatricals, 59. 
Wisdom of the Wise, The, 

Hobbes, 151. 
Woman of No Importance, A, 

Wilde, 148, 149. 
Wood, Mrs. John, 50, 52. 
World, The, Merritt and 

Pettitt, 69. 
Wrinkles, Byron, 69. 
Wyndham, Charles, 52, 53, 

55, 112, 137. 
Wyndham, Mr. and Mrs. 

R. H., 110. 
Wyndham's Theatre, 137. 

Yeats, W. B., 135, 169, 174, 

226. 
Yeomen of the Guard, The; 

or. The Merryman and his 

Maid, Gilbert, 85. 
You Never Can Tell, Shaw, 

159, 165, 188, 194, 195, 

196. 
Younger Generation, The, 

Houghton, 170, 211. 
Youth, 37. 

Zetetical Society, The, 178. 
Zola, E., 41, 65, 136, 141, 
157. 



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